Daedalus Drops In
by JoshuaSweetvale
Summary: The BC-304 Daedalus was equipped with a 'reality jump drive'. Things went wrong. The ship went adrift. Now the G-man has found the derelict vessel, the Doctor has restored the burnt-out drive and Zechs Marquis is first to board the trans-reality warship. The Daedalus will journey through dozens of different story-canons of the multiverse, dropping in on unfolding stories.
1. Prologue: Color Schemes

_**Daedalus Drops In**_

Disclaimer:

Any and all characters within this story belong to their respective and respected owners.

This document may not be used to reap a profit, if you do, you shall be struck down by lawyers

Disclaimer2:

The reason I'm writing this is to get some practice writing and to improve. So criticism is appreciated.

Disclaimer3:

I'm gonna throw everything I think is cool into the mix, but at a slow pace. I know how I want to resolve the story but it's a LONG way away.

If you think I did the stories you're famillair with an injustice, feel free to explain. I may alter stuff if I understand the complaint.

**Prologue: Color schemes.**

"_Knowledge is power." - Saying_

It wasn't a place. Not really. It had been built with gnosis and gnosis alone. The five of them were some of the most powerful minds in existence.

Wanderers. Tourists and buisnessmen and good samaritans. Technology. Magic. Information. Time. Power. All simply tools they used to step between the book's pages. On this day they'd write their own book.

A clanging whir echoed through the white void. Vworrrp. Vworrp. The TARDIS materialized and the Doctor stepped out. He looked at the nothingness around him. "Space between spaces..." he murmured, twisting a few of the strands of reality he and his compatriots had so beautifully woven into a shape. Brown. Cloth... aand...

Eldred was third to arrive. He saw the Doctor and the Timeless one chat in the distance. Eldred was an old archmage. He'd almost been a godslayer.

But thanks to a friend's advice he'd chose to become a peacemaker in a land of warring gods instead. He had gathered a vast library of spells and could teleport anywhere in a given universe through will alone.

However, universe-to-universe travel, book to book as it were, required some help. Help from Zyzyx, his familiair, who just this once stayed home, tending to Toldor's silly requests. Still, Toldor'd earned it.

Eldred had some contact with the Timeless one in the past, back when he was still called Nameless. It was he who advised him not to kill the gods but instead band them together. He and Eldred shared roughly the same portfolio, with Eldred being the weaker pure mage of the two.

Having said that, with enough souls to shove into his constructs, Eldred could raise an army. No amount of thrown lightning could beat two dozen phoenixes, dragons and rhinoks covered by Toldor's protection field. Lord knows certain entities had tried.

Stepping out of the whirling void between the worlds, Doctor Manhattan frowned lightly. In front of him sat three men, one, _(the Doctor)_ apparently human. With a cowboy hat on his head. One, a Jheran _(Gray reptillian, in a billowing gem-encrusted white cloak)_. With a cowboy hat on his head.

And thirdly, the often-changing face of the Timeless one, who had taken the form of a Krogan _(BIG reptillian, chitin plating, mouth like a frog)_ for today. With a cowboy hat on his head.

Resigning himself to the whims of the guy who called this interesting meeting, the blue god materialized a cowboy hat on his head.

Two members of the trio seemed to be engaged in what appeared to be a card game. Eldred's gruff voice spoke. "Poisoned" He materialized a black token and placed it on the Doctor's card. "One more to go, Time Lord." The Doctor, sitting cross-legged on the floor, winced at his poor luck _(yeah right, luck...)_ and looked up at Manhattan. "Don't suppose you've played?"

The Timeless one had, at this point, had enough. He slapped his hand on the 'floor' of the void, insofar as there was one, shaking up the card game and decaying it to dust. "Gentlemen..."

He took off his cowboy hat. He had a reason to wear the face of a Krogan. They were big. Loud. Tough. "...this is not a vacation! You are, in fact, taking time away from a very hard-earned vacation of mine!" Eldred's eyebrow quirked. His old friend sounded angry, but also weary... Yup, Timeless. The Doctor put a hand on his shoulder in empathy.

From nothing, a door opened a few feet next to the TARDIS and out stepped a man. Pallid, almost green skin, walking like a meat puppet. One of the more grim multiversal entities.

The Doctor stood up. "G-man." His voice carried contempt. The power broker responded. "That designation will do. Play is over. I know you, Doctor, and you know me. To the rest of you..."

He looked over the other three participants. A Jheran. Two energy beings.

The G-man cleared his throat: "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. The Doctor has asked me to find a... situation... for him to exploit. He wants to alter destiny and wants us to help guide the fallout."

His cold eyes glanced at the Doctor. "Normally, I set up civilizations to fight and butcher one-another. That is my preferred employ. I will not enjoy working with vagrants and tourists such as yourself. The only reason I am here is... debts." The G-man's eyes fell on the TimelLord who had reluctantly saved him and then upon each of the others. They seemed... displeased. This amused the G-man.

Eldred rose to his feet. "You've been invited by the Doctor, so you're needed. However like him, your physical body is rather frail, so try anything..." He looked toward Manhattan and the Timeless Krogan. The former nodded solemly while the latter added: "...try anything and we'll take you apart and place each molecule in a different dead universe."

The Doctor coughed. That threat reminded him a bit too much of himself. "While I like your... creativity, gentlemen, it's time we begin. Let us weave our own fate." He stretched out his arm, the others followed suit. A pentagonal, blue table materialized in front of them.

"The Blue Council is in session."

Somewhere across the multiverse, another Time Lord screamed as he fell through the void. The Doctor's meddlings had cut open a gap wide enough for him to pass through. From the time war... onto a desert planet recently colonized by the Tau.

...He could work with that.

-Preview- _(Cue choppy trailer)_

...The comms chirped into action: "Base, This is Wind."...

...BC-304...

...It had fallen out of the sky and it had swatted the dragon down like a fly and crushed it underfoot. The poor beast's soul was still screaming inside its bones. Irleth walked up to the colossal hunk of steel that had burrowed itself into the Pelagius Farm's soil...

...Meanwhile, a man walked toward the Shrine of Azura. Snow was blowing down onto his cheeks. He kneeled at the statue and prayed. "Hello, I'm the Doctor."...

..."OPEN FIRE!" Stormcloak catapults threw barrels of burning oil over the walls of Whiterun...


	2. Chapter 1: Fire and Souls

**Chapter 1: Fire and Souls**

"_Strike me down and will become more powerful then you can possibly imagine." - Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars (Episode IV)_

"_I ate a monk's soul once. It tasted like chocolate." - Richard, Looking For Group_

The comms chirped into action: "Base, This is Wind." His voice was low but soft and clear. Colonel Lucrezia Noin responded. "Zechs, what do you see?" The prince turned pilot's smile was hidden under his avian-styled steel helmet. "It's... A spaceship."

Before Zechs floated a dying behemoth. It was made of gray metal. Zechs would know it as steel mixed with Gundanium. Its builders called the stuff Trinium. It had other names in other universes.

Zechs Marquis floated toward the vessel. He'd switched off his red custom Aries's engines. _(Aries. Mech. Giant robot. Big freaking magnetic gatling gun. Detachable jetpack. Redundant gas mask. Fifteen feet high.)_ Zechs was a war hero. A war criminal. One of the last people ever to lead others to pointless slaughter. Hopefully.

..He was also Queen Relena's big brother.

Being Relena Peacecraft_ '_s brother and being a very _skilled_ mass-murderer meant he was punished for his crimes in a very strange way. The courts had ordered he would help train and maintain the global _(and colonial)_ police force, the Preventers.

His custom Aries was fast. Three times faster then a production model. It incorporated tech from Gundams. Gundams... giant robots, gods of death. War machines he and five other young men flew back in the day. They were far too powerful for this peaceful age, so when the machines were destroyed, nobody rebuilt them. ...Correction, certain factions _tried_ to rebuild them. The Preventers had disassembled those factions. Sometimes explosively.

Having a history as a prince, a warrior and recently, a cop chief squared, he couldn't help but admire the warship coming into view. It was big. 200 meters, maybe more, with slanted armor and a boxy look.

Dozens of point defense turrets, railguns from what it looked like... Several spherical turrets... Plasma vents. He had seen plasma weapons before. In fact, it was Gundam Wing Zero firing a plasma rifle that blew up his maniacal plans. The starshi's turrets looked about as powerful each as that weapon of mass destruction.

The turrets looked completely thrashed, though. Everything about this ship looked like it was thrown into an asteroid field. At mach 10. Little did Zechs know, something like that was one of the least exciting and destructive things that had happened to the ship.

He mumbled as he read off the markings on the ship's flank. "...United States... Stargate Program... BC-304... _Daedalus_." He couldn't help but speak that name in reverence. Where the ship came from, others would urge him to do the same. It had been an intergalactic warship. A taxi to humanity's most distant colonies. And the mallet that had crushed their enemies.

Zechs was sending camera footage back to Noin and Preventer HQ back at the Sanq kingdom far, far below his mech's feet. Down on the ground, Noin was busy mobilising five very strong, wise and impressive young gentlemen, urging them to find a mobile suit _(giant robot)_ and get to Zechs.

Also, Queen Relena was on her way. Noin decided not to inform Zechs about that little tidbit. If push came to shove and something horrifying happened, at least she'd have the chance to say goodbye. Not that he'd ever want her to witness his death.

Back in space, Zechs's Aries loomed toward one of the two launch bays. One seemed to have exploded from the inside. Shivers crawled up his spine. Whatever caused that explosion wasn't very nice, he could feel it.

The other bay was fine, but depressurized. The insides looked utilitarian. Military. Spartan.

His Aries was a bit large compared to the launch bay, which wasn't really a problem. With a hiss and a click, his mech's jetpack detached and he shoved it like a suitcase into what for his Aries was an under-the-bed-sized slit. He paused for a moment, hailing Noin.

"The ship is named Daedalus. It seems to have gone through a lot. It has writing on it in our language, but it's not... It's not from our Earth. I can tell by the design. Its computers are definitely going to tell me more but I already know it's from a different Earth."

Noin sat down at the communications console, placing her chin on her fist... Alternate reality travel... Kooky theory. But Zechs wasn't that kind of crazy. Delusions about human nature, yes. Not about science... It would explain the damage. But if it came to us from nowhere at random, dropping onto our page as it were, It may leave just as suddenll... ohgodzechs!' Noin dived for the microphone: "ZECHS, don't go in there!"

But, as it turned out, Zechs had already managed to squeeze his Aries into the launch bay. He could've let his mecha float outside. But noooo. Pinching the bridge of his (mask's) nose like a young man crudely drawn thousands of books, thousands of parallels away, he could only grunt in embarassment...

Zechs mumbled": "...stuck" Noin didn't quite hear: "Copy?" A grunt. "I'm stuck, Noin. My Aries is squeezed between a strange green cylinder that seems to have... appeared from nowhere... _(Puddle jumper. Small green spaceship. Cloaking device. Launches thermal missiles called Drones) _ ...and the cieling."

A clicking of metal on metal was heard. Zechs had repressurized the cargo bay at the expense of the exploded one _(which, thanks to forcefields, still had air, oddly enough)_. He was smashing his helmeted but spacesuit-free head into the alloy walls of the Daedalus.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Stupid, stupid, stuck.

Zechs's mech, awkwardly pinned as it was, looked almost like a lost puppy, staring dejectedly at its owner. Only it wasn't manned so that was just the headpiece being anthropomorphic.

"Zechs, we don't know when this thing will leave the way it came." Noin's voice seemed pleading. Then something changed. In the back of Noin's head, she realized something. She'd known him for years now. They'd gotten involved and... uninvolved. All this time the only thing he wanted was to break free of the rut he'd been _(rightfully)_ sentenced to. All he wanted...

Was to explore.

That bastard was _trying_ to get stuck on purpose! Trying to run away! Noin's voice shrieked into his ears: "Zechs, NO! You can't just... leave..._(me)_!"...

Awkward silence followed as the Colonel and her commander got back to denying, not unlike another couple that had walked the halls of the Daedalus.

He didn't reply. He _was_ gonna leave. Gonna stay aboard the ship as it hops. If it hops into death, nothing lost. If it hops into life... That'd be more then he'd ever deserve.

The halls looked like the halls on a naval aircraft carrier. Steel corridors, ribbed. All sorts of storage panes and doors lining the walls. A few decals. "Stargate Command" ...Proverbial stargate or literal? Zechs couldn't help but muse on the nature of this ship's beginnings. And its end.

"I've found the bridge. There seems to be a video log. Patching you through."

Zechs was silent as the ship's original commander, Colonel Sobel explained her situation. They had installed an _alternate reality drive_, a device that phased them into adjacent universes without any direction or control.

Needless to say, the device went haywire, refusing to power down and sending the crew further and further away from their home universe. They abandoned ship.

A new face emerged. A man in his thirties, he looked brilliant but neurotic, reminded him of fellow pilot Duo, actually. Only without Duo's charm.

The unkind genius explained vividly that he and his team were screwed.

A cut to the same man, this time wearing a different uniform. He explained he had found his own alternate's corpse, along with his team's corpses. Remorse flashed across the crass man's face. _Focus on the job, not on the bodies... Or there'll be eight corpses instead of four..._

Zech removed his helmet in sympathy, locks of gold hair dancing across his face. Millardo Peacecraft. His real name. Real face. He'd done horrible things in the name of peace. Thankfully, it worked. He thought he'd be killed for what he did, but the world gave him mercy. He concieved peace, now he had to raise it, like any good father. ...Did this mean he was walking out?

The scientist on the screen known as Mckay explained he had found a way to get his team back home but had apparently left this video as a warning.

"If you're watching this, leave this ship. In a space suit if you have to. The drive's only got a few more jumps in it, after it's burned out you'll be stuck in an alternate world for good!"

Another voice interrupted. "Rodney, move it!" The man on the video mumbled in annoyance, before shouting back. "Just a sec, Shep!"

McKay looked once more at the camera, shoulders high, gripping it, as if to shake some sense into the device. "If you're crazy and you wanna stay, good luck. Don't break the ship."

"_Thank you"_, Zechs sighed. The scientist didn't seem all that courteous, but he risked his life to warn whomever would come upon his little ghost ship... As if he'd heard, Rodney McKay nodded defiantly, gulped and reached for the off button.

The screen went black for a moment. Zechs was just about to contact Noin to tell her he suddenly _did_ want to get off the ship. He wasn't going to go on this journey and leave his sister _(and Noin) _if he was unable to come back.

But then the screen booted back up with a mechanical squeal and a barrage of green light. A man was shouting. Man's voice. Child's tone.

"Sorry 'bout that. It's my screwdriver... Hi!"

A face was pressed against the screen. A face topped off by a fez. Apparently, this was _another_ arrogant, brilliant scientist.

"I've modified the reality drive, just for you. Well, whomever you may turn out to be... This ship..." The man sounded awed... "This ship is hope. If you find it, you can keep it. Travel. Polish it back up. Be a force for good in the universe! I'm sure doctor McKay would say the same, but he didn't have the time to do... _this!_" The man in the tweed jacket and fez flipped a small switch.

In the video's background, a low, steady grumble sputtered into life. The same grumble Zechs had been hearing since he stepped aboard the Daedalus.

The face with the fez continued. "I've just rebooted the reality jump drive. Long story short: you're set. Short story long: In due time, you'll be able to plot a course with this thing. That's gonna require a seperate computer from what the Daedalus has on board right now, but it's doable. If you really want to, you can do a complete 180 and return home... Everyone should have a chance to do that..."

The fez looked wistful, but perked back up. "Anyway, none of that's a guarantee." He slapped the desk in front of him and stood up "It's a bit frail right now, battle damage will mess it all up. So don't fight something you can't beat. Good luck, and should you hop aboard, I'm sure we'll meet someday. Geronimo!" The third and last recording cut out.

At this pre-recorded codeword, the bridge's main systems lit up like a christmas tree.

Viewscreens portrayed vital statistics and not-so-vital ones in a digestable format. A few sparks flew here and there. Sure, the ship had been mangled... But the reactors were online, and apparently charging up by draining power from the reality drive. This seemed to be the thing the strange third figure had added.

The few remaining guns _(and one missile battery)_ seemed to have power. No hyperdrive, whatever that was. No shields. Damn. And holes everywhere. Ah well, she was holding together...

Zechs contacted Noin. "Is Relena there? It's time to say goodbye..."

He pushed his helmet back onto his head. "...for now."

It had fallen out of the sky and it had swatted the dragon down like a fly and crushed it underfoot. The poor beast's soul was still screaming inside its bones.

Irleth walked up to the colossal hunk of steel that had burrowed itself into the Pelagius Farm's soil and placed her palm on the Elder Dragon's leathery wing. It burst into flames, fire of the soul. Irleth could feel the beast's mind, its experience. She reached out and tore it apart. The dragon's carcass exploded as the Dovahkiin _(Dragonborn)_ ate its soul.

Irleth wasn't like the people around her. She had the soul of a dragon. Only dragons can truly kill dragons. She embraced her fate as a dragonslayer: the Dragonborn, the only one who could keep the children she shared a home with from being minced and shoved down a dragon's esophagus. She had walked the world and she had found the draconic god-king. She had killed him. Now the dragons were a dying breed.

Irleth the Dragonborn was the city of Whiterun's protector. A demigod dragonslayer using the knowledge and magic of dragons _(and battlegear made from the bones of dragons and/or gifted by demons and gods) _to keep her city neutral during the civil war between the Empire and the Stormcloak rebels. That was not her duty today. Today was special.

Her draconian servant, Ohdaviing, had spotted a flight of dragons headed toward Whiterun. Dragons generally attacked solo, sometimes in duos. Never in what Ohdaviing had called 'a pack' with hints of both fear and contempt. Today was special.

Ohdaviing had gone to enlist the aid of Irleth's closest allies: The Greybeards. The only humans beside the rebel leader _(and the Dragonborn of course)_ who could use Dragon magic. Dragon magic wasn't hand gestures like human magic. It was a magic of words. Irleth had planned to unleash this magic, along with the two Daedric _(Closest translation: Not-god. Demon.)_ artefact-weapons at her hips upon the first of the dragons that had come to attack Whiterun.

When the first dragon, possibly a scout, circled the city's fortifications, Irleth knew she was outmatched. Golden scales glittering in the sunlight, a roaring fire blasting from its mouth.

Three guards died. "YOL TOOR SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUL!" The most horrifying sound: The roar of a dragon's voice, mixed with the screaming of man. Today was special.

She decided to attack the Elder Dragon on her own anyway, despite her clear disadvantage _(Irleth's idea of a disadvantage is the lack of an overwhelming advantage)_, but something had beaten her to it.

Zechs, sitting in Colonel Sobel's seat, new captain of his ship the Daedalus, had activated the reality drive. With a blinding flash he disappeared from the sights of five young men in Taurus mechs surrounding the Daedalus and appeared in the skies above Tamriel, Irleth's home universe.

Thing is, Tamriel wasn't like most universes. It was small. One planet. A small amount of space. The stars were not stars, but rips in reality. The other planets were the corpses of the gods that had formed reality. The moon was Lorkhan, the greatest of them all. Zechs had looked at Lorkhan's visage in awe, a dead planetoid hovering above a beautiful, earth-like world.

Then he realized the sun wasn't a sun either. It was a massive hole in reality _(From which Magnus, a god, tried to escape Creation)_. A hole spewing out raw energy and light.

The Daedalus could not have been named more ironically at this point, for its outer skin had begun to melt. The shieldless, swiss-cheesed ship was in no shape to be bathed in protomatter.

Computer systems began to explode and Zechs initiated descent immedeately. Thankfully, this relatively quick reaction had spared _(most of)_ the ship. It'd been shoved into a descent, though, and one must realise a spacecraft is not an aeroplane.

The Daedalus had the aerodynamics of a lead barn and Zechs knew it. He used the engines, inertial dampeners, heck, even the artificial gravity in a jury-rigged combo to slow descent.

Then he spotted the dragon. He switched it all off and went manual.

He knew he really should have been careful with his ship. But he saw the dragon incinerate the guards on his vidscreen. Today was _special_. He decided to do the right thing.

Yahvoniir was burning the humans. He relished the smell of battle. The Dovahkiin _(Dragonborn)_ was chasing him. He wanted to take her on, devour her flesh and learn her secrets. Alas, that was not to be, for a bright light dropped from the sky and clonked Yahvoniir upside the head. He wasn't dead. _But it __HURT_.

It was at this point Irleth raced toward the crash, ripped the dragon's mind from its body and delivered to Yahvoniir his ironic fate. Being eaten... Eaten by an elf.

Drawing her weapons: _(Dawnbreaker, a great platinum sword with a tiny sun embedded in its hilt, and an ebon mace dripping black ooze: The mace of Molag Bal)_, she walked up to the shape that had so gracefully bodyslammed the dragon. The shape that had now faceplanted into the Pelagius's cabbage patch.

And their leek patch. Their potato patch. Oh, the farmhouse had been destroyed. This was quite some collateral damage. Still, the dragon deserved it, Irleth thought to herself.

With a hiss and a whir, an outer door opened. The beautiful Dunmer (_Dark elf. Ebon skin, face scars.) _walked into the airlock, admiring the sublime smithing. Such lines.. Beautiful. Flawless work. Whoever had built this ship knew their craft...

When the inner door opened, Zechs threw a fire hydrant at her face. Not unlike was the case with another duo that had fought aboard such corridors, it didn't do much good.

The opposite, in fact. _"FUS!"_. A sonic boom erupted from a startled Irleth's lips. Dragon magic at its best. It washed over the hydrant, shoving it back in the other direction at quite high a speed.

Zechs only barely managed to dodge. He'd taken his fencing sword up with him. It was a pointy weapon. He brandished it at Irleth. She drew Dawnbreaker. At this point, Zechs surrendered. His thin excuse for a sword clattered to the ground.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Both parties said those words in unison. Dawnbreaker's glow rose for a moment.

Zechs chuckled. "My name..." He took off his helmet, revealing more of his platinum-blond hair and a boyish, regal face. "...Is Milliardo Peacecraft. Disgraced prince.

I am going under the alias of Zechs Marquis, because Peacecraft is an honorable name, and I will not tarnish it with my acts of war." Zechs carefully put his helmet back on over his head. "That is who I am. I want to save you."

Irleth was slightly taken aback, but quickly changed her stance again. "I don't need saving. In fact I've already saved the city out there over a dozen times!" She waved her sword out toward the north.

Zechs tilted his head and stepped away from the black-skinned woman with the large weapons and mystic powers. He looked confused for a moment. "I meant you as in _plural_. The people in the city." He grumbled. "I'm just offering to help." An irritated sigh. "Look, just follow me." Zechs disappeared down a corridor, then another, then another. Irleth had little choice but to follow.

She sprinted up to Zechs, walking beside him to wherever he was going in this ship of his. No reason not to see what he had to offer. Zechs glanced at the first elf he'd ever seen: "So who are you?"

She smiled: "I'm Irleth. Dragonborn. I kill dragons. Take their power. I kill mortals. Take their _items_ of power. Et cetera. But only ones that threaten my people. And the city of Whiterun in particulair. I love fighting for those I love."

They came up to what looked like a war room. Except the maps on the walls of the Daedalus were alive and writing themselves.

"Look at this." Zechs tapped one of the consoles, showing five dragons approaching. Irleth's elven eyes widened and she looked worriedly at her new peer. "We need to stop them! Can your ship fly?"

Zechs sighed an exaspirated electrician's sigh. "In a few days with some of your blacksmiths? Yes. Now? No. And that's not all." He led her to his captain's chair.

"I've been scanning the area. Look here." As he tapped on the keypad and pointed at the screen above it, Irleth realized Zechs had passed the few minutes he had between crushing the dragon and meeting her by doing _tactical analyses_.

It wasn't just the dragons. The Thalmor were coming. _All_ of the Thalmor, and a few of their vassals too.

_(The Thalmor are evil. They want to prevent people from worshiping Talos the Human God because Talos is the reincarnation of Lorkhan, the strongest god. And for complicated reasons they really don't like Lorkhan._

_Humanity was forced to ban Talos worship, though rebels defy this edict. At this point, Talos, the strongest god reborn, is on life support, so to speak)_

Something strange had set up a portal at a pass to the north of Whiterun. Armies were flowing out of the portal. The Thalmor's armies. Their mages, their soldiers... their vassal slaves...

The dragons were a diversion! But why Whiterun? Zechs interrupted Irleth's train of thought: "I have a suprise for the dragons, should they come close. It will kill some, if not all of them. Though I'd rather you thin them out first. Can you do that?"

Irleth nodded. "I'll get my friends."

_(Days earlier, thanks to some creative time travel)_

The College of Winterhold was a cold place. Phinis Gestor was on guard duty. He was a conjurer. A mage who specialized in souls and summoning and Daedra _(Demons... Or more like superbeings who didn't take part in the creation of the world.)_

The bridge that connected the mainland to the College shivered. Not because it was cold, though it was. Because of vworrrp. . The TARDIS materialized in front of Phinis.

Out stepped a man who really should have been wearing a fez or a cowboy hat. Or a coat. Instead he was wearing his old-timey mismatched tweed and bow tie... In the icy cold. Unflinching. "Hi."

Gestor was dumbfounded. The stranger spoke:"I want to ask you about..." The Doctor pointed up at the sky. "A friend told me your god died. I want to help."

Phinis Gestor was immedeately snapped out of his confusion. _Lorkhan? If this mage could...:_ "Our librarian has a great deal of books. Together, we can help you help us. Come right in... umm..."

The two scatterbrained old men looked each-other over. Finally the younger-looking one spoke: "The Doctor, just the Doctor."

Gestor nodded. "Right this way" The TARDIS whirred one last time, which helped the Doctor recall. "Pardon me, wizard man," He tapped Gestor's shoulder "I've neglected to bring some _toys_ for another friend! Do you have any _soul gems_?"

There wasn't enough time to gather the guards. Irleth was sprinting toward Whiterun. There wasn't even enough time to see where Hadvar and Ralof, her two stooges, were at. That was unfortunate, because for stooges, they were really very capable!

Irleth had made it halfway to the main gate when a dragon crashed down in front of her, drawing in air to speak out death.

Now dark elves can withstand a lot of heat. Irleth was special. She could withstand a quick dip into a lake of lava partially thanks to her biology but mostly because of the finely crafted and magically enhanced dragonbone armor she almost always wore.

The dragon knew this, so it decided to use an ice beam.

"FOH KRAH DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!" It sounded like a cussing sand blaster. It felt like a cussing sand blaster in the arctic.

Luckily, Irleth had dropped her weapons and raised her hands in defense. Now, that doesn't sound like much but realize: she's done this before.

Her armor could handle a little cold, not as much as would be needed... But she was projecting a magical barrier from her hands. Energies fluttered like a mirror of light, deflecting the wave of frost and sleet.

She took virtually no damage. Bit of frostbite at the folds. It'd heal. Magically if nessecary.

Irleth rolled back, grabbed her holy and unholy weapons and spun forward. The cobalt dragon was bashed on the side of the skull by a disgusting Daedric mace that drooled a paralytic black ooze...

But dragons could handle a little toxin. He would just fla... flaa...aa... The dragon's head rolled to one side.

Having survived the worst this medium-sized lizard could offer, Irleth simply ripped its throat open using her Dawnbreaker, spinning back 'round and running off toward the Daedalus as the dragon's corpse exploded into soulfire and trailed after her.

Inside the Daedalus, Zechs Marquis had been busy activating the few surviving point defense systems. This wasn't exactly an easy job, especially because _someone_ _(Ronon)_ had worn out the controls.

He'd painstakingly patched main fire control into his Aries. Having said that, three of the four remaining turrets on the Daedalus's skin were now on automatic. The missiles were left in the proverbial back pocket, just in case something would come up.

Whilst their cobalt compatriot was being killed going into Whiterun proper, two serpentine green drakes flew toward the ship. Their curiosity was rewarded by a barrage of magnetically launched steel-trinium to the face, wings and sternum. Fully automatic railguns. Stargate Command spared no expense.

Both green drakes could no longer fly. One because its wing had been wounded, one because its heart had been pierced. The latter fell dead onto the stables _(and a stupid horse that didn't flee when it heard railgun fire), _filling the air with noise of snapping wood and bones.

The injured dragon had fallen into the Daedalus's dead zone. Now normally you'd expect an earth-built warship to not have any dead zones. This wasn't normal circumstance. Most of the turrets had been damaged or even torn off!

So the rear wasn't defended. "YOL TOOR SHUUUUUL!" The dragon poured fire between what looked like the steel beast's legs.

"Cli. Cli-click. Cli-cli-CliFWOOOOOSH." The Daedalus's main rocket engines briefly roared in reply, boiling the _(very unluckily positioned)_ dragon's brain inside its skull, causing it to crack open and blow like a party popper.

Another death caused by the whims of irony. In his Aries's cockpit, Zechs winced in empathy.

Meanwhile, a man walked toward the Shrine of Azura. Snow was blowing down onto his cheeks. He kneeled at the statue and prayed. "Hello, I'm the Doctor."

The Doctor and the godess Azura spoke of Lorkhan the dead moon. Of how Lorkhan was in fact already reborn as Talos, the god the Thalmor had forbidden.

And if the dead moon and the god who wasn't being worshipped anymore were to become one again, a third component would be needed.

Something sparkled. A gem the size of a wheel. The vessel for a soul. For a god. Azura's Star.

Two bronze-clad Elder Dragons remained. They were circling the crash site from beyond the range of the Daedalus's turrets. Long range ice bursts temporarily immobilized all three of the gun mounts. They descended, fire blazing.

One of the two decided to set down on the landing bay whilst the other purposefully overshot his prey. He decided to keep his distance and let his sibling provoke the metal home's spirits.

However, said dragon didn't realize the Daedalus had just enough battery life left. One turret was still swiveling. It wasn't a railgun. It was a _plasma_ turret.

Zechs grinned from within his Aries's cockpit. Remote control, manual override. The ball-with-a-nozzle turret whirred into action, locking on to the brown-red dragon. "Boom."

Zechs exhaled as a torrent of ionised trinium gas, better known as trinium plasma shot from the turret like water from a super soaker. The Elder Dragon's torso was dust. Its bones were dust. The rest of the beam had carved its way into a mountain on the other side of Skyrim, taking out a few trolls in the process.

It was at this point though, that the Daedalus itself could no longer fire its magnetic weapons. The dragon staying close was also screwed, though.

All the battle damage and the subsequent firebath had loosened the Trinium-steel a little around the edges. Zechs's Aries had a gauss cannon which worked almost exactly like the ship's point defense system.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Like rivets in reverse, he was shooting out the metal joints. The roof swung open and the dragon was tossed prone onto the ground as a livid Zechs forced his mech to rise.

The gun was loaded. Its barrel was lined up with the dragon's ugly head. Zechs pulled the trigger and half a dozen hypersonic trinium rounds (swiped from the armory)... failed to hit.

The dragon was an animal, not a mech, which meant that it could move quite a bit faster then Zechs was expecting. It had vanished. The red Aries looked around. And up.

_Damn!_ The dragon was coming in high. "yol..Toor... SHUUUUUUL!" The Aries raised the roof plate up like a shield at the screaming fire in an obvious homage to another mech using a spacecraft's armor plate to stave off incineration.

This didn't faze the elder dragon who proceeded to continue into a full-body tackle of the big red metal man. Zechs was lucky the dragon instinctually slowed itself when the ground was coming close.

If it dived headlong at Zechs, the dragon may have been turned to mulch, but the same would have happened to most of the Aries. Instead, the beast tilted upward to land on him, wings and legs extended. Though it managed to shove the Aries onto its back, the dragon found itself literally eating gun.

*Pom* *POM* *POMPOMPOMPOMPOM* A shivering Aries mech covered in dragon blood and possibly some brains too sat down onto the side of its hangar bay, using the Daedalus's superstructure like a big bench.

The poor machine was given a short reprieve when the front hatch popped open, letting Zechs out to get some air, only to see Irleth running around, carefully tapping dead dragons with her finger, causing them to explode in a blaze of embers that followed her around.

It was at this point that Zechs took a moment to pass out and... recalibrate... to his new life.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor was sending the Daedalus an E-mail about Lorkhan, the body of a god, that had died, Talos, that mind of said god, which was still alive, and a way to connect them.

Oh and that all of the Thalmor were approaching the city explicitly to prevent Talos's ascension to moon-god status. The Doctor had been tracking Zechs. This'd be the first time he'd make real use of his new investment.

Kaworu Nagisa had tricked the dragons into playing distraction. He'd lied and cheated. He did what had to be done. Nevertheless, he was getting good at deceptions. Subtler was... better.

Kaworu knew what even his peers thought of him. An abomination. A hybrid between a true inhuman monster and a quintessential human. All the human's mind, all the monster's desires.

...They were right, really. He had embraced his nature all his life... And he'd embraced his new job to get the hell away from his last one. He looked at the city of Whiterun, people in panic as a golden dragon was baking guards. It reminded him of _home_. He supressed a shudder.

The white-haired genetic experiment that walked and talked like a nonchelant teenage boy nodded at the Nathrezim. "Open the gates."

Four Dreadlords _(Nathrezim. Warcraft species. Demons. Ten foot tall. Winged vamypres. Hypnotists. Leeches)_ at the mountain pass to the north of Whiterun synchronized their efforts with the four Dreadlords at the military base on the Summerset Isles.

_(Home of the High Elves, Led by Thalmor.)_ The Thalmor and their slaves were to step through the teleportation gate and exterminate everyone in Whiterun. Lorkhan, the dead god floating up in the sky had to be kept from being reunited with his soul Talos at _all costs_.

...Well not _all_ costs. But Nagisa was still going to throw everything _this_ universe could offer at his employer's problem. Which reminded him, he had an appointment.

Having taken care of buisness, half a smile on his face, Kaworu Nagisa swaggered off into a shadow.

Moments after he had stepped away through the seams that bind reality, the Daedalus had appeared, crashing down onto a golden dragon, grinding it into the ground beneath a cabbage patch. And a leek patch. And a farmhouse.

Hadvar and Ralof looked at the mismatched army that stood before them. Zechs and Irleth had actually done it. Upon hearing the revelation that a Daedra was going to give its life for Talos and that the Thalmor _(all of the Thalmor, plus their Wood Elf and catman flunkies)_ were attacking Whiterun, Ulfric the rebel leader and Imperial general Tullius signed a truce and moved all their forces into Whiterun.

Before night had fallen, a contingent from Winterhold, led by the conjurer Phinis Gestor and the _entire_ Dark Brotherhood _(Assasin's guild... Badasses...) _had joined their side, saying a healer with a green wand had called for them.

They could use all the help they could get, seeing as the Thalmor army was apparently streaming out of a portal that led straight to their home of Summerset.

Whilst this was going on, the TARDIS had found a tiny dimension sandwiched inbetween a dozen others. It materialized and the Doctor stepped out.

"Deposed Daedric Princeof Order, where are you?" He waited. Nothing but the clatter of rocks smashing into each-other in the zero-g enviroment.

Half a dozen chunks of granite and a black void were all that were in this place. "_Jyggalag!_ I have come to collect you!" In response, something white and crystal churned into being.

Hadvar had fought the stormcloak rebels for a long time. That was before they were attacked by a dragon. Before his regiment got burnt to ash along with the town it was stationed in.

He and Ralof only barely made it to Whiterun, where they pledged fealty directly to Irleth, the dragon-slaying demigod. They'd done so much since then... Gathered so much power. So many allies.

He could only hope it was enough as he saw the first dozen Thalmor running up Whiterun's hills. _(The Thalmor Elves are excellent casters, poor melee fighters. Your basic stuck-up Nazi elf.) _Hadvar glanced at Ralof.

Ralof nodded back at his compatriot and raised his voice. Irleth had left him in command: "OPEN FIRE!" Stormcloak catapults threw barrels of burning oil over the walls of Whiterun, at the Thalmor army that was running toward the acropolis.

A rain of arrows so vast a drunken bard would later proclaim it had 'blotted out the sun' was launched. Only in this story, dozens of Imperial archers, led by Dark Brotherhood agents were the ones raining down iron death.

Thalmor shields, both magic and mundane, didn't do all that much good.

After a dozen volleys and the first proper reloading pause the first waves of Thalmor had been efficiently turned into a prickly, burning pile of yellow elfmeat.

The other Daedra, other gods that hadn't died during creation, were getting _restless._ They really, _really_ didn't want Jyggalag to reach Talos.

The Thalmor weren't done. They had servants in the form of the Wood Elves and the Khajit, cat people. The Wood Elves had dinosaurs. The cats had mages of their own. Both races had some very skilled archers. Then they charged.

From the mountains, the Thalmor army ran into the tundra inbetween Whiterun and the portal. Superior fire support was on the side of Talos, heavy cavalry_ (Elves on raptors. Elves on RAPTORS!)_ on the side of the Thalmor. Whiterun's walls were breached and combat at the city's edge devolved into a primeval melee. Until...

Rumblerumblerumble. Something was coming from behind the city.

It was FAST. Quick as lightning, it skidded over hills and strafed the battlefield, firing a hail of trinium rounds. It was red and made of steel. In his cockpit, Zechs gritted his teeth. It was difficult to refrain from friendly fire with a gun designed to cripple giant robots.

Dinosaurs exploded, groups of Thalmor magi were blown into blood mist and most importantly: the Thalmor ambassador to Skyrim was crushed by a giant metal boot. _(Bonus irony! Yay!)_

But that wasn't all. Old sages and old mages unleashed the magics of dragon and man upon the elves. Ohdaviing and another massive dragon named Parthuurnax flew over the battlefield alongside Zechs, introducing the Thalmor to the joys of close air support. Made of flamethrowers.

Then Irleth entered the battle with a dozen werewolves running around her and Ulfric Stormcloak _(leader of the rebellion, Dragon Voice user)_. Ulfric and the wolves held off the enemies whilst Irleth conjured up massive numbers of corpses from the fallen on both sides.

The Thalmor weren't the only ones who could conjure. When she was done raising the dead the ugly way, Irleth switched to an ethereal bow. It fired arrows that looked like glass. They exploded into a million pieces, matching and in some cases exceeding the damage Zechs's Aries was doing with its gauss gun.

In the skies above, unseen by mortal eyes but glimpsed by a few special combatants on both sides, the Daedra warred.

Azura, the Daedra who had spoken with the Doctor stood on the side of Talos. Flanking her stood Sanguine, _(who out-and-out loved mortals), _and Sheograth, (_who was once mortal and had been in the same shoes as both Jyggalag and Talos once before.)_

Behind them stood several weaker demon gods (_whom each had followers on the side of Talos)._

Together they were only barely holding back the other, monstrous Daedra from manifesting into reality and completely taking apart the battlefield. Even for gods it was a strain.

As the battle raged, both on the ground and in the sky, something unexpected had happened. The portal to Summerset had collapsed, because the Nathrezim, the creatures that were _maintaining_ the portal, had entered the fray.

Showing Skyrim why they were called the Dreadlords, they conjured swarms of insects and threw down meteors that rose up into infernal golems. Golems that were beating up the magi like they were rag dolls, while the vampiric demons cut swaths of men apart with their claws.

Zechs had been expecting the party that made the portal to involve themselves directly. Luckily, he was a smart prince and he'd prepared.

...When in Rome, or in this case, when in fancy magic land...

Pressing a button on his seat, something deep inside the Daedalus beeped. On the stricken battlecruiser's back, a hatch retracted, revealing 24 naquadah-tipped guided missiles.

And the Aries had target painting lasers.

In a flash, all 24 missiles took to the sky, spinning through the air like a stormcloud. A moment later, all eight dreadlords, everything they'd summoned and a few very annoying Thalmor were blown to bloody giblets.

Finally, when hundreds had died and everything had turned into a churning melee, the TARDIS materialized at the shrine of Talos at the heart of Whiterun. A priest was praying, _pleading_ to his god for help. It came.

Out of the blue box stepped a man holding Azura's Star _(a wheel-sized soul crystal)_. The crystal shone with the light of a thousand suns, instantly blinding the priest. But it made no sound. It was cold, grey light. The light of Jyggalag, the Daedric god of Order.

A soft voice spoke. It was the Doctor adressing the priest. "I know it's blinded you. I'm blind as well. But can you hear it?" The whiteness was completely sickening. Energy straining to be released. Divinity encapsulated in a crystal meant for mortals.

The only reason it didn't go up in a magically-induced holocaust was because the entity imprisoned in the soul crystal was trying so hard not to explode.

It was whispering. "Place the crystal upon the shrine. Let my magic flow out of the crystal into Talos. He will use it to ascend.

My divine power will finally become a part of the world, yet my mind will not. It will remain inside this crystal.

Both Talos and I are content with this. Doctor, I don't like to emphasize, but the shrine is three steps forward, three feet down. _HURRY, FOR I AM IN PAIN._"

Quickly the doctor placed the Star of Azura upon the shrine of Talos, guided by the priest who'd spent years worshiping Talos on that very spot.

The crystalline star dimmed and the light within faded to a grey sparkle. Then, gold and white light shot up from the shrine into the sky. A pillar of sheer divinity... then it was gone.

Zechs, Irleth, and many others looked up. They felt it, even though they were too far to see the bright lights... Ulfric Stormcloak fell to his knees and wept in joy. With rising horror, the surviving Thalmor leadership also turned their eyes upward.

It was beautiful. The moon, Lorkhan, was visible during the day! It bled oceans! Grew forests! More then that, it was bathed in a bright white light coated in rainbows. Not the dead light of Jyggalag, which had driven even the mind that formed it mad, but the beautiful splendour of Talos. Soul of a god. Mind of a human. Now again, ascendant.

When the moon had completely regrown itself and the battle had almost ground to a halt, the shrine of Talos pulsed with a tsunami of divine wrath.

Every time the white light washed over something axe-shaped, _(the symbol of Talos,)_ be it a shrine to Talos, an amulet or an actual axe, it would propagate. This light crossed the world. Genuine divine intervention. It spoke to all.

To the Doctor _(who was quietly slipping back into his TARDIS)_, Irleth, Zechs and the dragons it said thanks.

Talos thanked Ulfric for upholding worship, but scolded him for taking innocent lives in his name. The other gods got a more detailed greeting now that Talos was both a Daedra and an Aedra._ (Both a living divine and a divine invested in the world, something unique)_

The most relevant part for mortals?: "Daedra will stop destroying people's lives or Talos will come after them." The more chaotic Daedra quiety obeyed.

Talos and Sheograth mindhugged the way only squeeing bro-gods can mindhug. Azura wasn't squeeing, though. Nah. Stoic. Yup._ (...SQUEEE!)_

All in all, every single sentient being on Tamriel got a short one-or-two-line conversation with the new Big God. The effect the clarion wave had on High Elves was a bit more interesting, though. In the future, the High Elves who weren't with the Thalmor would describe it as 'being spat/slapped in the face'

The Thalmor themselves? Every single one of them fell into madness. Screaming fits, shouts of pain and suffering, driven by an overwhelming _fear_. None of them committed suicide. Talos placed a mental block. He didn't let them.

After a few minutes, the global communion died down, the light faded and the world returned to normal. Only now, the moon was a verdant _paradise_ smiling down at the world.

It would later be realized that Talos had resurrected everyone who'd fallen at the battle, even the Thalmor combatants and even the animals. _(But not the Dreadlords, serves 'em right.)_

The Thalmor and everyone who willingly sided with them suffered from what the Daedalus database would call 'severe PTSD'. They could live their lives. But every once in a while they'd fall into the deepest hell a soldier could fall into. The deepest fear.

Talos's job as god was to give courage, calm and control in the face of pain and death. That knife too cuts on both sides. He'd taken away his blessing.

After a few days of hard work by Zechs in his mech and most of Skyrim's blacksmiths (With the dragons and Irleth playing blowtorch) all Zechs's basic equipment was as good as new. The Daedalus's armor had been welded back up and thickened, as had his mech's plating, which, of course, had again been repainted red.

Suprisingly enough, the thicker armor didn't reduce the speed at all. Apparently, blacksmiths in Whiterun produced a steel far lighter then average steel, allowing for thicker armor.

The priest who suddenly wasn't as preachy anymore _(Thx, Talos!)_ had found a large bag labeled "For Zechs: pass to Eldred" and did, in fact, give it to Zechs.

The Daedalus's computers were still on the brink of dying, so Gestor and his mages had patched Jyggalag into the ship's crystal 'veins'. It had worked wonderfully.

As was planned by the Doctor, power cells were slowly recharging by leeching off the slow trickle of energy given off by the reality drive, though none of the really fancy space-age systems were online. In fact, most of them had exploded...

The ship could fly, though. Not just hop from universe to universe, it could, in fact, rise up off the ground and fly around! Zechs decided he would fly back up into the atmosphere before commencing his jump.

After the ship was rebuilt, Irleth had organized a big feast for Zechs and Jyggalag, at which Zechs told tales of his homeland and the heroes and horrors of war.

He drank and ate like a proper citizen of Skyrim and slinked off with a werewolf-lady for a few hours. Come noon the next day, he was scheduled to leave.

Everyone was there to see him off. Irleth presented him with Dawnbreaker, the platinum magic sword with the tiny sun hovering at its heart.

Again, Zechs removed his helmet, this time to show tears rolling down his cheeks. They embraced and wished each-other luck. Once he got in and sealed the door, Zechs pushed his helmet back onto his head before brandishing his new blade in a battle stance.

Outside, after a few minutes, an air lock on the roof of the ship flew open. Zechs stepped out, waved at the crowd below and threw three things.

One, his old fencing saber. Two, an MP5 machine gun, with a big sticker on the side reading 'For Irleth' Accompanying the gun: an ammo master mould and short instruction note so that Irleth could reload. Everyone laughed and took it in their stride. Finally, the airlock snapped shut again, this time for good

For his part, inbetween the antics, Zechs was running diagnostics and doing manual checks. He wanted to make sure everything was working fine.

He tapped on the crystal embedded into the bridge's back wall and nodded softly. "Jygg, ready to leave?"

The entity in the crystal made a sound resembling a sigh. The comms chimed. "For so long I've wanted to escape this pocket universe, not realizing how gloriously chaotic a place it was. My power has made me blind. Now I sit at the heart of a warship and I am content. We should return here someday. ...I am ready, my captain."

Zechs nodded with sincere contentness of his own and a big smile on his face. "Thank you, Jyggalag. Feel free to take us up!"

At this juncture, one should realise Phinis Gestor and his mages examined the computer crystals aboard the Daedalus carefully. Very carefully. They managed to grow them larger, mixing them with their own soul gems to create a hybrid.

A material that could transmit any type of informational medium, from magical flux to electrics to everything in between. Jyggalag, former Daedric prince of order, had become the ultimate starship A.I. The brain at the heart of these nerves. God in the machine. And at the moment he himself realized this, he flared his engines and _rose._

The roaring light of dozens of lifting thrusters shunted the Daedalus back up into the sky, toward the moon now named Talos. Zechs knew he really shouldn't stay up near the sun for too long, so he looked once more at the sight he saw when he came in...

This time joined by a hazy holographic crystal knight. Jyggalag. His voice was as it had always been, a hoary sigh, but now there was inflection and melody.

Jygg admired the scene. "Good evening, captain. The moon... it is... beautiful? Yes. It is. I wish you the best, Talos." The crystal knight nodded solemly. Stars sparkled in the background as the verdant, _living_ moon seemed to wave them goodbye. Zechs nodded at both Talos and Jyggalag. He turned to the Daedalus's new A.I.: "Activate the drive."

In blinding light, they disappeared.

-Preview- _(CHOPPY EDITING YAY!)_

...Nagisa had unleashed a plague upon an unsuspecting world. Unleashed it upon _children_. Thankfully, these children were _not_ defenseless. Ikki grabbed his wristwatch...

..."First thing you should know, pale kid: I know what that thing is!" Nagisa scoffed at his captive. "How would you possibly..." The balding man continued: "It's an alien egg. A Xenomorph! I've seen it in the movies." The hybrid's grip slackened in suprise. "Second thing you should know..."...

...And he saw the visage that still haunted his nightmares. Unit 01's metal skeletal mask of a face, flanked by massive shoulder pylons, groaning...

..."HAMMER FIST!" The short grey mech's punch sent the Xenomorph skidding into the alley's far wall. The little robot brandished its golden wrist-mounted sword in front of its face. Which prompted Zechs to pull out Dawnbreaker...


	3. Chapter 2: Escalation and Anticipation

**Chapter 2: Escalation and Anticipation**

"_Charnel! Death is not the answer to everything!"_

"_Yes, torture also has its merits!_"

_-Persephone and Charnel, two of Eldred's patron deities._

"_For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"_

_- A law of physics and, according to some, of sociology as well._

Several years ago, a demon stood on the brink of death. His name was Marduk. The wizard Eldred had rallied the five gods against him. Together they had struck the demon down. Dragons and phoenixes flew around Marduk as he pulled himself up by his staff. He gurgled, blood pouring out of his mouth. Lightning played across Eldred's fingers as destructive force was poured into Marduk's skull. Marduk dissolved, his mind an echo. Eldred sighed as a Shrike whizzed past his face.

"All this time we walked together, you listened, but you did not hear me. I told you I would stop you this time!" Marduk had been defeated. The demon looked upon itself. This was _impossible!_ Eldred couldn't have done this! Marduk was more powerful then this! Marduk was _stronger!_ Marduk was not... Ugh. Marduk was dead.

Eldred would go on to reconnect with his old friend the Timeless one, who'd advise the Doctor to include him in their Blue Council.

Present day: **"Exctraction commenced"** Three men looked down at the spinning and screaming power core. At the heart of the installation the Tau had built, a chained god wailed. To no avail. The three men had ordered construction and had provided the power source. The benefits of the device were shared equally. _For the greater good_, of course. The leader looked at his two collegues before pushing a button on the console before them.

Back at the time and place of Marduk's grave, a wailing was heard. A red haze coupled with a sound not unlike that of a TARDIS, but more drawn out. Stretched. Maduk's body was ripped from the timestream, though Marduk had still died, then and there. A paradox. Time doesn't like paradoxes. But apply enough brute force...

Marduk the should-have-been-dead demon lord materialized on a teleportation platform. He looked into kind eyes. Kind eyes set in pale skin, constrained and contained by a facemask. Scorpius, a hybrid between a human_(ish)_ and a Scarran_(Lizard-folk)_ helped him up. Only to be shoved back, falling into the arms of his two compatriots.

One of them was wearing a metal gauntlet. He pointed it at Marduk. Marduk was a monster that ate energy in all its forms. Wizards and even gods trembled before him! Now, moments after his last defeat Marduk found himself again at the mercy of some wizard-man. Pain wracked his body as blue fire erupted from his flesh only to arc back upon him, scorching his plated skin.

The third man was chuckling. His eyes were still hidden in shadow. A suprisingly normal voice echoed through the chamber. Its tone was one of pity. Of empathy: "We saved you! Do you want revenge on Eldred, yes or no?" Marduk was bewildered. Nothing but a wild beast. He strained to nod. Kane stepped forward, smiling. "Good."

In blinding light, the majestic, newly re-plated BC-304 Daedalus appeared far above a planet. It looked to be far more Earth-like and far less Tamriel-like. To the pleasure of both Zechs and Jygg. Down on the surface, there was technology. Lots of it. "I've taken the liberty to... tap into... a television broadcast, captain." Zechs nodded at his newly acquired god-A.I.: "On screen."

A large square at the center of the front windscreen went opaque. A picture formed. Two robots, each no more then four feet high, were depicted on the impromptu television. One machine was strafing the other. "Sumilidon!" A haughty young man shouted from the sidelines. "Flexorsword!" The yellow and black feline robot slashed at its counterpart. It hit. The other machine's arm flew off, both ripped ends crackling with sparks.

Zechs slumped down into his chair, sitting the same way Irleth's boss always sat. He bit his finger: "Blood sport. What do you think?" Jyggalag's holographic avatar looked down on his captain: "I think violence is part of human nature. I would prefer a bloodless blood sport to a blood feud."

"Very philosophical" The voice came from behind them. The G-man stepped out into the bridge. Zechs flew out of his seat and drew Dawnbreaker whilst Jygg warmed up the few shield emitters they still had.

"Come now." The G-man stared at Zechs. "If I could board your vessel without you noticing, I could also destroy it. I am just a messenger. A messenger of the _Doctor_." Dawnbreaker was sheathed. Zechs opened his mouth to speak but to his suprise, a forcefield sprang into place between Zechs and the G-man, sealing Zechs off from the rest of the ship. Jygg's hologram appeared beside the G-man and turned toward him.

Jyggalag was _furious: _"Share your message and leave or I will vent all atmosphere!" The G-man raised an eyebrow. Zechs smiled: "...You entered his _body_ unannounced. That's generally considered bad manners. ...I'm not stopping him." The G-man's eyebrows rose up, he stammered and he reached for his tie. "I... I beg your forgiveness. I've come to warn you. The same entity that had interfered with the Doctor's efforts, the entity that sent the dragons your way, has been found. Down there."

The G-man inclined his head toward the viewscreen. Sumilidon, the yellow robot with the flexorsword, was shot in the head, kneed between the legs and shoved out of the ring by a blue-white gunbot with pink detailing. "Brass WINS!" Brass's operator, _(a young woman named Erika)_ was jumping for joy.

Whilst the G-man was making his... ahem, airless exit from the ship, _(Immedeately followed by transdimensional teleportation courtesy of Eldred)_ everybody on the planet watching television cheered as one. Brass, a relatively basic model medabot owned by Erika, a young lady who'd helped save the world, had beaten Koji, the posh young man who, too, had helped saved the world.

Saving the world helps you get into world championships, Metabee mused. He was watching TV in his big lazy chair. Metabee smiled. His owner Ikki and he had, indeed, saved the world a few years back. Erika and Koji were among the people who'd helped. Metabee was a yellow-white gunbot. Beetle-based design. Missile launcher on the head. Oh and he looked cute. Or so he himself thought. Stepping out of his room into their small apartment, Metabee wondered where his owner Ikki had went.

The answer was that Ikki had gone for a walk. The quarterfinal between Erika and Koji wasn't something he was all that into anymore, having fought both of them dozens of times. He knew how it'd problably turn out. Sumilidon would tire himself out and Brass would evade. When Sumilidon would trip up... Bam. It's how she got him and Metabee the last few times. Ikki had won world champion a few years in a row but he and Metabee decided to retire last year so he could focus on his studies. At least for a while. They were of one mind on this. In three years there'd be a spectacular comeback for Bee and a diploma for Ikki.

Smirking despite his pain, Kaworu Nagisa observed Ikki walking past a small group of children. The back of Nagisa's head was bleeding. Profusely. Nagisa's eyes seemed to have lost focus. Even an entity edging on superbeing status doesn't like taking a blow to the head. Nagisa smiled as he heard the ripping of flesh and bone followed by an otherworldly scream. Another one of the Xenomorphs had gestated. Thankfully they weren't considering him a threat or a viable host. Nagisa would have time to recover.

The Xenomorphs needed people to hatch their larvae into adult forms. Their queen commanded them to stride forward. Ever forward. More life to drag into the nest. More. The patrolling hunter saw the children playing in the sand pit. It saw the young man sitting on the bench beside them. It didn't know who the young man was. If it knew the young man was Ikki and what that meant, the Xenomorph may have re-thought its decision. But it lunged for the children. And screams were had.

Nagisa had unleashed a plague upon an unsuspecting world. Unleashed it upon _children_. Thankfully, these children were _not_ defenseless. Ikki grabbed his wristwatch. "METABEE!" Advances in technology allowed a medafighter to teleport his medabot to him, using the power of the ancient and mystical 'medal' A.I.'s at the robot's heart. Back in Ikki's day, this wouldn't have been possible. A very specific set of circumstances would have to be met to teleport a medabot. Thankfully, times change! Advances in technology meant one could now teleport in a fully-operational medabot at pretty much any time.

The Xenomorph saw Ikki cross his hands, standing in its path. A futile attempt to prevent it from bringing its queen more humans. But then something unexpected happened. A flash of yellow, followed by the materialization of a short metal man. The Xenomorph was smart. It could think. It asked itself, it asked its queen: 'Why have we been hatched on a planet where _everyone_ has their _own personal robot guard!_' The smart beast stopped wasting precious miliseconds on comptemplation, for it was at this point still dashing toward the kids, the man and the puny little robot. Prey for the hive!

Metabee's metallic voice rambled into being: "Kekekekekekekeke!" He was disoriented, horrified! He'd materialized staring down a rampaging black... ant-monster. Like a light in the dark, his buddy Ikki's voice was crystal clear: "SUBMACHINE GUN!" The tiny yellow warbot's eyes ignited in green. Target locked. He raised both his arms and unleashed a spray of bullets from both his accuracy-focused right arm and multi-barrel left arm. The Xenomorph's shining chitin was pierced dozens of times. Blood met air and immedeately turned acidic. The speed the Xenomorph had built up meant its carcass still flew forward several feet, tackling Metabee, even though several 9mm bullets had already crossed the alien's mind.

Metabee's steel hands shoved the carcass off him. Bee stood up... before twitching and furiously shaking his arms. Ikki's medabot/best friend turned to face him, hopping up and down and screaming in pain. A thin layer of metal was melting off Metabee's armor. Ikki's eyes widened. Oh crap. Corrosives. Think, think... AH! "Bee, into the fountain!" A mad dash by a yellow medabot followed by a swan dive and a splash. The flowing water diluted and dispersed the acid sprayed onto Bee's armor plates. Quick thinking on Ikki's part saved the lives of both the children and his medabot. Metabee was sitting at the bottom off the pond, legs crossed. Being metal, he sank. Being supertech with a bit of precursor tech mixed in, he was waterproof. "Kekeke...ke.." He was hurting. He was _scared_. This was new. This was _weird._

After disposing of the G-man, Zechs asked Jyggalag to log into the planet's internet to find out more about the 'medabots'. To the Daedalus crew's suprise, moments after Jygg's tap into the internet had begun, someone hailed them. "...lling the.. ahem: The 'BC-304 Daedalus'. Half the nations on the planet have you on radar and the only reason the other half don't is because the earth is a sphere and they can't radar past the horizon. You're also broadcasting an identification beacon. You're either incompetent at stealth or incompetent at something else. I'd be happy to help you out, maybe spin a coverstory? Especially if you're space aliens!..."

Zechs chuckled and tapped some keys on the arm of his chair to reply. "This is Zechs Marquis, captain of the interdimensional starship Daedalus calling you. Sorry to inform you, we're not aliens, just creatures from another world."

A cheer from the other end of the line, followed by the voice of someone who was clearly a gleeful old man: "I'd love to know more! Please follow the directions I'm sending you and land. It's a wharf. For sea ships, because we're not going into space yet... Though we _can_, in theory... I'm Doctor Aki, by the way. If you'll let me inspect your ship, I'll make sure nobody believes 'creatures from another world' showed up and I'll do repairs if you want me to." Zechs nodded: "Approaching, Doctor Aki. You seem awfully energetic. _Exactly_ like the scientists who've been a boon to my ship so far! Feel free to poke around but be warned, my on-board A.I. is a vengeful god." Doctor Aki took that statement the way it was intended and gulped.

Earlier that day, in another reality entirely, two men were being reprimanded. One was Kaworu Nagisa. The other was Bobby Hobbes. Nagisa was hovering just above the ground somewhere in a big city. He couldn't tell where he was exactly, for he was in a psychic trance contacting his bosses. They were currently reprimanding him for getting eight dreadlords killed and screwing up his mission:

What worried Nagisa was that instead of the expected four robes shouting at him, he'd found five. Granted, when he was recruited, there were only three, but he'd _met_ Kane when he joined the Red Council. Kane wasn't half bad. Like Scorpie he was reasonable, had goals. Scorpie _(Scorp__**ius**__)_ had approached Nagisa after... after Nagisa's _previous employer_ had asked him to assist in one too many genocides.

Contrary to Scorpius and Kane's intellect, the head of the operation was a power-mad idiot. He was, however, the head of the operation because he could kill Nagisa and/or the other members with but a twitch of the gauntlet on his hand. Power-mad and powerful. Bad mix.

Ah well, what are you gonna do? The pay was good, the hours were even better and Nagisa actually able to have life next to his work for the Red Council so he just nodded and obeyed like any good employee who wants to keep his job.

Yes, he wouldn't screw up again. Yes, this next plan will yield an army. Yes yes yes. After the mental link closed, Nagisa punched a brick wall. Yay. More genocides.

Nagisa had ported into an alley. Garden variety earth-world. Nothing special. Or so he thought. Appearing next to him: a single leathery Xenomorph egg, _(courtesy of Marduk, but Nagisa didn't know that bit yet)_.

The other man being reprimanded that day was Bobby Hobbes. His boss didn't like him spending company money fixing his van. Well, the van broke _on the job_ so he'd fix it _on the job_. It was at this point that Hobbes walked out on the conversation. Ever since the fat man retired, it was even more difficult to get a refund! The fat man was a miser, but had a heart of gold. Former right hand Eberts had turned out to be a far more _competent_ boss. Smarter. Emotionally stable. But just as frugal, without the easily abused soft spot for good meals and good results.

Hobbes was walking down the street, grouching, newspaper in hand, wondering where his buddy Darien had went. He had only just taken a bite from his cheeseburger when he was yanked by the scruff of his jacket into an alleyway.

The little snot that had yoinked him couldn't have been older then eighteen. And he was an albino or something. Red eyes, white hair. Mostly caucasian... kinda asian looking though. When the little freak kneed him in the gut, Hobbes was forced to spit out the cheeseburger. It hurt but Hobbes laughed. Then the little delinquent shoved Hobbes into a crouch, gripping his arms so he'd be bend over, looking down at. ...Holy crap. This day just got interesting.

Nagisa was expecting the balding red-faced man to scream after he'd blitzed him. Apparently the man's mind had snapped, for he was laughing. The Facehugger's egg was opening, getting ready to... well... hug face, and plant an egg in Hobbes's chest. Hobbes regained his composure, or, well, the composure he generally had in situations like this: "Oh pal, there's three things I really aught to tell you right now..." Nagisa shoved a foot into Hobbes's gut. Hobbes gargled, spat up a bit of blood and strained to look up at Nagisa: "First thing you should know, pale kid: I know what that thing is!" Nagisa scoffed at his captive: "How would you possibly..." The balding man continued: "It's an Alien egg. A Xenomorph! I've seen it in the movies." The hybrid's grip slackened in suprise.

"Second thing you should know... My name's Bobby Hobbes, I'm a secret agent. I know what I'm doing and you just made me angry." Nagisa was perplexed. Perplexed but not stupid: He was still holding Hobbes tight. No mere mortal was going to escape his grip. Not even a spook. Not even a spook that knew what a Xenomorph was from a film. Hm, Nagisa reasoned, apparently this was a reality in which _other realities_ were _fiction_... Wait a sec. ...That wasn't supposed to be possible. No overlap. Overlap was bad for their plans. Very very bad.

"Third thing... My partner can turn invisible." Nagisa's eyebrows rose. "Wh-" An invisible crowbar slammed through Kaworu Nagisa's medula oblongata. The rear of his brain was destroyed along with the back of his skull. Though Nagisa was ungodly in his power, he wasn't the toughest nut to crack when suprised. A dead Nagisa slumped down as the invisible liquid biometal quicksilver turned solid and shattered, revealing to the visible spectrum of light the crowbar and the man holding it: Darien Fawkes, the Invisible Man.

Hobbes let off a pained chuckle as picked himself up:"Too ya long enough!" Darien helped him stand: "I wanted to hear him out. Not every day you see a creepy albino kid drag a full grown man into an ally wi... holy shit, is that what I think it is?" Hobbes nodded and turned toward Fawkes: "Yeah, it's a Xenomorph egg. We better call the keeper, she'd kn-" Darien's mouth flew open as he stared at a space beyond Hobbes's peripheral vision. Hobbes understood immedeately and ducked. Kaworu Nagisa's fist, or rather, awakened Angel Tabris's fist snapped through the air above Hobbes's head.

Nagisa'd been resurrected by the Core inside his chest. He was back... mostly. There was still a hole in the back of his head, but it had already begun healing. Nagisa, or rather Tabris, because his conciousness was currently inside his crystal core, was grinning. "You _killed_ me!" Nagisa had been killed before. By the one person he... loved. Or something. He himself was unsure of what he felt. He'd been resurrected. And now this guy, this invisible schmuck had killed him _again_.

Quicksilver flowed from Darien's every pore. A gland in his brain secreted the beautiful reflective grey goop that would turn him invisible. Hobbes wasn't so lucky. Unwilling to pay any more attention to the guy who was still visible and therefore not a threat, Nagisa simply flicked his wrist at Hobbes, telekinetically slamming him against a wall. Hobbes pulled his gun, prompting Nagisa to stare into Hobbes's eyes for a moment, a burning gaze simply switching off his brain. Hobbes went limp, gun in hand. The Xenomorph egg, which had been laying in the corner, had vanished, or rather, _turned invisible_ by this point. Kaworu sighed in annoyance. His red eyes began to glow and an AT-field fell into place. (_Soul-forcefield, as upposed to electronic forcefield)_ It let off a telekinetic shockwave which rattled the rusty trash cans and metal staircase within the alley.

Darien became visible in the corner. He could feel it. Two ribs broken. Left arm. Still concious. Still.. concious. Darien played dead. He was lucky Nagisa was in full-on telekinesis mode, using his extrasensory powers to yank the egg toward him instead of checking Darien's pulse.

After intense focus on Nagisa's part, a trans-universal portal opened. He threw Hobbes through, along with the hatching egg. Evacuate. Find some other suburb to unleash the Xenomorphs.

Fast forward a few minutes, Nagisa was dragging an unconcious, recently face-hugged Hobbes through an abandoned factory, checking to make sure they weren't seen before passing out and leaving Hobbes to... hatch.

A few blocks away, in another alley not unlike the one he'd just left, quicksilver solidified and shattered. Darien winced in agony. He didn't know where he was. Looking from the language written on the cardboard boxes around him he looked to be in Japan. His earth's Japan? The albino psychic kid's Japan? He slumped down against a wall.

... Hold on a sec. Japanese albino kid. With telekinetic powers. Happy smiley, even when fighting. And a red glowy gem in his chest. He'd heard that one before. But where?

In agony due to his broken bones, Darien searched his mind. Then it began to dawn on him. He took an interest in Anime during his prison sentence. _(The clean kind, thanks.)_ It was where he'd seen the kid before. On TV. Or, well, DVD and some books. But still! He knew who he'd just fought. And if Xenomorphs could be real ... Then the kid didn't just _look_ like...

Oh crap. Oh crap oh crap oh crap. Of all the Anime to come to life on him, it had to be _that _one. Hobbes had been facehugged by a real live Alien and Darien himself had been beaten up by Kaworu Nagisa, a.k.a. the _fucking Seventeenth Angel._

Okay, calm down, Darien. Ungh. Breathing laboured. Probably the ribs rubbing on or even piercing the lung. He knew he had to get to a hospital, but they'd discover the quicksilver gland stuck in his brian. The doctors might mistake it for a tumor or worse: they might realize it was something else entirely. Whatever would happen, they'd try and cut him up. Straining to stay sane and collected, Darien heard a thud behind him and turned around.

Before him stood a four-foot tall grey robot with a golden sword mounted on one of its arms, armor styled after a stag beetle and a ragged cloak on its shoulders. The machine had hopped down into Darien's alley from the roof. A small white cat rubbed its back around the little robo-knight's legs. Darien stared into the robot's red eyes and smiled like he'd met his own personal saviour. He took a deep breath and winced, sputtering blood: "Holy crap. Yes! Rokusho! It's Rokusho, right? Right... Take... Take me to... To Karin! To Karin. ..Neutra-nurse. Neutra-nurse. Not the hospital. She can heal me..." Pulling on Rokusho's shoulders, _pleading_... Darien collapsed.

Rokusho the masterless medabot quirked his head in bewilderment, sighed and hoisted Darien onto his shoulder.

Zechs was being led through the halls of Doctor Aki's laboratory. Doctor Aki was an old man with a balding head, hair at the sides as white as his lab coat. His huge black sunglasses also seemed to serve as a HUD and the tourist-esque clothes he wore under his lab coat made him a disarming, Einstein-like figure. His demeanour was similair: "I hope you don't mind, but my granddaughter is currently leading the team that's evaluating your ship. I'm reading you've got a giant robot on board?" Zechs nodded: "If you can make some incremental improvements to it, especially when it comes to reaction speeds, I'd appreciate it. But don't install an A.I. It's a suit, not an assistant."

Zechs looked down as they walked down a walkway suspended above the medabot assembly lines. So many different types... "About the medabots: Where do you get their A.I.'s?" Doctor Aki smirked: "I'll be frank with you, because you're a spaceman and you're not gonna tell the press..." Zechs nodded. "Archeological excavations. They're from a civilzation long extinct. People had _uploaded their minds_ into the medabots. Sufficed to say, all but a few were lost. The survivors are the templates that we now copy. We don't know how it works, we just know that it works. The original medals we've unearthed are... _more_ then the copies. People rather then pets. They can _do_ more too. They're obviously entrusted to people who know the secret so that they're able to live as comfortable a life as possible. Which brings me to Jyggalag, the god you have in your machine."

Again, Zechs nodded, smiling understandingly at the scientist: "You want to design a medal off him?" Doctor Aki chuckled: "You're a sharp one, mister Peacecraft. Yes. Crystal series. Based off his A.I." They walked into Aki's office. Zechs sat down opposite Aki: "If Jygg wants an homage like that, it's fine by me. ...So are you going to tell the world that your 'experiental medabot' they've detected is actually an inter-universal incursion?"

Aki laughed and pulled his sunglasses down, looking directly at Zechs's helmeted face: "You really are smart! Or is Jyggalag streaming you the news? No, no, of course I won't tell the world. They'd go mad! For no good reason! I couldn't hope to replicate the... reality engine you've been using. Why would I tell them if it'd only whip them up into a frenzy?"

Zechs nodded back at Aki: "No reason for them to get all world-war-worked-up about it, eh? Yeah. Been there, done that. I wonder if my world's at war because I disappeared aboard a reality-skipping gunboat." Aki shrugged: "Go back and check. Or can't y-...? Oh...! Oh of course! You'd need to plot a course! Which would require... Of course!"

Aki jumped up at Zechs, suddenly understanding what the captain was angling for :"You want to go back! You want me to give you an A.I. that can hook up to your reality drive and... oh." Aki's hyperactivity suddenly died and he murmured as he looked down. He pulled his glasses off and placed them on his desk. "If you're asking if we have a supercomputer that could fit on your ship to guide you home, I'm sorry. We don't have the processing power you'd need. When it comes to A.I. all we do around here is replicate an old design we really can't understand." The room fell silent for a while.

A wistful expression crossed Zechs's face: "It's okay." A relieved Aki grinned: "We did fix the teleporters, tho!" Behind his mask, Milliardo Peacecraft's eyes snapped open. "Teleporters? How in-" The vidscreen in Doctor Aki's office lit up, revealing a scowling young man.

Doctor Aki turned around: "Ikki! Is everythi... Oh dear god!" Ikki panned his camera across the Xenomorph's corpse, talking over the video: "It attacked some kids. I was able to step in and call Metabee. He's not okay. These... things... They spew acid." Another call to doctor Aki's office. His viewscreen suddenly extended horizontally, doubling in size rather then going to splitscreen. Eh, if you're rich...

"Doctor Aki!" A young, red-headed woman appeared on the vidscreen. Doctor Aki's mouth flew open. No longer the funny Einstein, he sounded both angry and concerned: "Karin, is everything allright?" Karin had been doctor Aki's ward for a long time. She'd been an ill girl and if she'd been born in any past era, she'd be dead by now.

But this was the era Aki and his peers had built. Oppenheimer had become death. Aki had given _life_ back to ancient civilizations... and! He'd built the Neutra-nurse type medabot to _heal_ and protect Karin, so she could have a somewhat normal life whilst he poured his funds into proper therapy and treatment to be developed for her congenital condition.

It had mostly worked. Her blood vessels had been strengthened and she could regulate her own temperature. She still had a weak heart and it would take time for her to really build up a healthy constitution, but she could basically live a full life now.

Karin turned her camera outward as well. In Karin's living room stood Erika and Koji, the world championship players they'd seen on television. They too were Doctor Aki's pseudo-grandkids. In front of them Neutra-nurse, a bright pink/white robot, was pumping healing energy into a broken man.

Darien Fawkes woke up, looking first at Koji's face, then at Erika's. Darien nodded affirmingly. "Hey." Erika tapped her medawatch, changing the camera feed from Karin's watch to her own before turning it over to Darien: "This is Doctor Aki. Tell him what you told us."

Darien nodded: "Umm, hello Doctor Aki... wait.. holy crap, is that Zechs Marquis? ...Figures." Zechs's eyebrow quirked. Darien muttered something about a Char. And bad luck. "Anyway, there's a Xenomorph infestation, and I know where it's coming from."

The G-man and Eldred walked into the void. The Doctor and the Timeless one had already arrived. "I've delivered our message." The necrid trader sounded even more dour then normal. Bit hoarse too. Eldred sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose: "Yes. Yes you did. ...They... They airlocked him."

Eldred shook his head in resignation before taking his seat beside the Doctor. The timeless one supressed a laugh: "You really are great with people, G. Really. Well done." The G-man's frown seemed to deepen. Eldred noticed the Doctor's expression. He noticed something else too. "...Oh no. Where's Manhattan?" The Doctor clenched his teeth and inhaled. "Well..."

Nagisa had been healing. This was fortuitous for Nagisa. Because things were about to hit the fan for him and his little alien ant farm.

It was getting dark. Ikki's hometown had been cordoned off by the international army and their medabot armed forces. Doctor Aki himself had also dispatched nearly all his scientists and gave them appropriate medabots to find people and escort them to the military safe zone. Zechs and Aki walked down the main street's sidewalk, patrolling the town for stragglers.

"There's a light burning, over there." Dawnbreaker was leveled at a small house at the left end of a long street. Ikki's parental home. He wasn't home right now. No, Ikki was racing home from the city in his Porsche _(thank you, multiple first prize world tournament wins)_ with Metabee in the passenger seat.

"Thank you for fixing me up, ma'am." Nagisa nodded cheerfully. Ikki's mother closed her eyes bemusedly: "You got hurt. It happens. Next time, wear leather when riding your motorbike. Or at least a helmet. You had quite the gash." Nagisa nodded. "It'll heal _(some more)_. But I'll be more careful in the future. Nothing like getting hit when you least expect it."

"I agree." Ikki's dad shoved a syringe into Nagisa's neck, squirting him full of sedative. Being the commander of Japan's branch of the aforementioned international army, he got suspicious when he was suiting up and a young albino man, _just like the one they were looking for_ was brought in injured by his wife.

This was a mistake, though, because as soon as the needle was injected, Nagisa's eyes turned bright red. _"Now why did you do THAT?" _Nagisa rose up into the air, a wind picking up inside the home. Nagisa sighed, tapped a finger on his lips. _"Okay. Playtime's over. Go away."_ His words hummed. He extended his arms. An AT-field fell into place. Then a shockwave.

Ikki's home simply exploded. His parents were flung in two different directions. His dad was caught by Zechs, whose piloting skills gave him excellent reflexes. His mom was caught by Rokusho, whose robotness gave him excellent reflexes. Needless to say, two golden swords were drawn and two figures ran into the debris cloud. Unfortunately, Nagisa teleported out.

Rokusho's built-in scanners and Zechs's helmet could both see through the fog. Rokusho, however, had situational awareness _radar. _He noticed Nagisa had reappeared right next to doctor Aki. Rokusho smiled. The old man was definitely made of very chewy meat.

Nagisa screamed in terror.

Doctor Aki had pressed the THREE medawatches on his arm. He had summoned in THREE faces.

Nagisa was blinded by the flash. When he opened his eyes, he thought he was dreaming. He stared... And he saw the visage that still haunted his nightmares. Unit 01's metal skeletal mask of a face, flanked by massive shoulder pylons, groaning at him from THREE directions. He was surrounded.

Nagisa screamed. As did the three Robo-Emperor prototype medabots, who each looked _remarkably_ like Unit 01, the giant metal-clad death god from Kaworu's home reality. The death god that had crushed him in its hand. With the boy he loved at the controls.

The poor refugee demigod's brain broke. Protecting his human side, his Angel core shielded him by projecting an opaque AT-field shell. The three robo-emperors were still roaring. Energy was gathering inside their maws. Particle cannons. They released their aggregated energies onto the halfgod inbetween them.

Three bolts of near-unlimited power slammed into and broke apart Tabris's shield, though a significant portion of the energy had been redirected back onto the mechs. Needless to say, mutual annihalation was had.

Nagisa had a leg and a hand blown off. He floated away, wincing in pain. Each of the Robo-Emperors had taken significant armor damage.

But these were super prototypes. Designed to test weapons later added to lesser medabots. They were able to both take a beating and dole it out. They weren't meant for the general public.

The only reason Doctor Aki was running around with THREE of the things on call was because he, like his ancestors before him, liked his big booms.

"Robo-Emperors. Entwine!" Aki grinned. Like something from... well, Anime... the robo-emperors's legs, writhing masses of cable, shot forward and ensnared the fleeing Nagisa, lifting him up.

The somewhat meta-aware white-haired pretty boy squealed in terror. His eyes turned bright red... Then bright gold. As did his hair. When he was recruited by the Red Council, they'd made some... _additions_ to his DNA.

His emotional fever pitch had activated a hidden trigger. Apparently, they'd built in Super Saiyan capability. He flexed his muscles, closed his eyes and chuckled. The red crystal in his chest synchronized with the primal fury that had been hidden in his DNA.

The robo-emperors's tentacles were sliced apart by a blindingly white AT-field. Vectors spun and twisted around his body. Nagisa nodded politely at Aki before throwing an energy ball onto one of the Robo-Emperors, instantly totaling it.

He teleported away again. The two remaining Robo-Emperors flanked Doctor Aki as he sprinted into and through the dust cloud that was once Ikki's home.

Inside the remnants of the house, Dawnbreaker flashed against Rokusho's saber. Rokusho's metallic voice carried gravitas: "Stop this. I'm not the enemy. I've observed the pale man."

Clang. Parry. "Follow me. I have radar. We can find him. Fix this." Zechs grunted, lowering his sword. The two men and three robots all sprinted toward a certain abandoned factory. It was here that Nagisa had reappeared. This was his hideout.

Nagisa was panting, head down. Waddling toward the alien queen, his leg barely regrowing, he placed a hand on her head. Communion of minds. The queen shuddered and roared. Ever single Xenomorph in town raced toward the factory. Protect queen. Protect ally. Protect! Little did the Xenomorphs know, that was a _stupid, stupid_ move.

On the outskirts of town, Koji, Karin, Erika and Darien were seated inside Koji's Mercedes. They were racing toward the warehouse, followed by Ikki and Metabee in the Porsche.

At this point, Jyggalag had begun coordinating communications between the team, patching into the medabots and medawatches _(and Zechs's helmet)_, guiding everyone to the confrontation site.

All the while, Darien was speaking furiously with Karin. Erika was in the front seat recieving a proper briefing from Jyggalag and Koji was focusing on driving.

However Koji did hear Darien losing mental cohesion, shouting and rattling off nomenclature. If Darien was intimidating Karin, Darien would be in _big_ trouble. From Karin, more likely then not. So Koji focused on ballistic parking.

Two men, two big robots and one small robot ran into an alley. Two cars were quickly parked, five people and four more robots rushed in.

Rokusho and Zechs were on point, if only by virtue of their speed. A latecomer Xenomorph hunter who'd ran parallel to the group saw his chance and jumped onto Zechs's back. Or at least tried to.

"HAMMER FIST!" The short grey mech's punch sent the Xenomorph skidding into the alley's far wall. The little robot brandished its golden wrist-mounted sword in front of its face.

Which prompted Zechs to pull out Dawnbreaker and swing it forward from the side in an arc. Unsuprisingly, the Xenomorph hopped _toward_ Zechs, who twisted his body out of the way, letting the alien simply jump through his blade.

He put his weight behind Dawnbreaker to keep it steady as it bisected the beast. The Xeno's carcass hit the floor and Zechs twirled around, glaring at the nest, sword still dripping acid. ...He loved his new vocation.

Five slightly smaller drones ran into the alley from the entrance to the building. Thankfully, the Robo-Emperors's maw-mounted particle cannons had been charging.

"YAAAWH!" Two lazy roars were followed by two huge horizontal bolts of hot light. One hit its mark. The other merely blew the Xenomorph's legs off. Brass and Erika, who came up from behind, shot its head to pulp.

"_Sumilidon, FLEXORSWORD!"_ A Xenomorph cleanly sliced in half. Sumilidon and Rokusho took turns approaching Darien, who turned the blade-wielding medabots invisible. The quicksilver was also an excellent acid retardant.

"_Metabee, ROCKET BARRAGE!" _Another hit by a rocket, merely dazed.

"_Raaaaaaawh!" _The monstrous robo-emperors unleashed their arm-mounted machine cannons and spreader missiles into the building, killing quite a few Xenomorphs and popping dozens of the immobile eggs. Their leg parts, normally unused for combat, whipped rubber tentacles at the single still-mobile worker in their proximity. Eventually it tripped up and lost its head, courtesy of Dawnbreaker.

It really WAS getting dark, though. After Metabee had converted into swiss cheese the head of the Xenomorph his missiles had only grazed, the yellow bot looked up at Dawnbreaker: "Hey buddy, can you brighten up the place?" Zechs shrugged.

Doctor Aki took stock of the situation. He looked at all the people standing in the very narrow alley. He palmed his face. Over the following moments, everyone's face started to to depict the same dread. ...They'd been trapped.

It was at this point that all of twenty Xenomorphs crawled out of the sewers, over Koji and Ikki's cars, over the roofs beside them. Koji and Karin squealed. Erika wasn't doing much better. "Brass, fire! FIRE!"

Aki sighed. "Emperors. Cover the walls and the factory entrance side. DO NOT RELENT!" Both behemoths roared.

Doctor Aki was fiddling with the third medawatch, trying desperately to recover the AI of the Emperor that had been blown up.

All three Emperor AI's were clones of Metabee's... _unique_ mind and he quite liked them. Thankfully the medal seemed to be recoverable. That point would be moot if they were unable to make it out, though.

The medabots strained to hold the line. Metabee and Brass were on fire support, Rokusho and Sumilidon were in the melee, taking turns to hold hands with Darien to obtain a quicksilver coating.

Zechs was holding up Dawnbreaker to provide some light to the folks without night vision. He prayed. The star at the blade's heart glowed like it had when he'd met Irleth. It glowed brighter. Brighter still. The Xenomorphs recoiled and began falling back.

The blinding daylight, however, drove several into berserker rages, causing them to fall over and impale themselves onto the Robo-Emperors. The machines roared, flailed and fired everything they had but they were both simply too big and slow to properly lock onto the lightning-quick Xenomorphs.

They bashed and crushed the aliens between their heavy guns. One even bit an alien's head off. As the battle dragged on however, both remaining Robo-Emperors were worn down by claw, fang and a LOT of acid.

Thus they had to eject their medals into Doctor Aki's hands and power down. In the end the Xenomorphs did fall back, but not before over forty of their number were slain.

Everyone was still alive. Everyone was unharmed. Even _(apart from the Emperors,)_ the medabots. The medabots had been heavily damaged by the acid but they were being patched up by Neutra-nurse. "MY CAR!" "MY BEAUTIFUL CAR!" Ikki and Koji shrieked in unison. They were right. Their once-impressive cars were now molten piles of slag coated in Xenomorph carapace. To end their small-brained whining, Erika slapped them both. No further words were said. Everyone was tired.

Then Kaworu Nagisa, swishing with the energy of a Super Saiyan, stepped out into the dark alley: "Hello, mister Marquis, mister Aki. Kids." He giggled somewhat drunkenly.

Rokusho lunged. "YOU WENT AFTER CHILDREN, YOU MONSTER!_ HAMMER FIST!"_ Nagisa sighed, grabbed Rokusho by the wrist, zapped his circuits and shoved him down a reality portal.

"Who's next? How about you, Zechs? You're not gon-_NO!_" A crowbar had been shoved through Nagisa's chest from behind, cracking the red crystal at his core. A voice behind him whispered: "Fuck you, Tabris."

"Oookidoki..." He simply teleported the invisible Fawkes into his right hand, closing fingers around his throat. "Byebye, Fawkes. It's been a- Oh"

Kaworu Nagisa's Super Saiyan form suddely gave out. Copy-pasting DNA simply isn't enough to replicate the ultimate warrior. No power boost, no golden hair, alas.

However, the crowbar was still stuck in Nagisa's chest, causing pain and power leakage. Soul leakage, to be alarmingly exact. Darien kicked and scratched at Nagisa who was barely holding him at arm's length. Everyone lunged at the now-depowered monster.

Nagisa, close to despair, decided to retreat by stepping into the portal he'd shoved Rokusho into, dragging Fawkes in with him. Despite or perhaps because of the group effort, nobody got to the portal before Nagisa closed it up.

Thinking that this was finally it, Zechs sheathed Dawnbreaker. He turned to the group. "I'll go after Rokusho and the stranger tomorrow. For now, let's-"

Brass was raising her hand. Zechs nodded at Erika's bot, whose eyes flickered as she spoke: "I...I'm equipped with the same radar awareness system as Rokusho. The.. there are one-hundred and forty-nine Xenomorphs remaining. Fifty-seven hunters, Ninety-one drones... and a big one. There are also Three-hundred-fifty-eight eggs about to hatch, containing lethal larvae."

Everyone's eyes slowly turned toward the warehouse. Inside Zechs's helmet, something flashed. He smiled. The only other people smiling were Erika, Ikki and Metabee. They'd done this before. An inhuman wail blew through the alley. The queen was coming out to play.

Metabee placed his arms and legs into a combat stance. The other medabots tried to prepare themselves but they knew, like their owners... this was it. Erika punched the air in joy: "Kick it, Ikki!" Ikki chuckled, she'd seen this done before: "Just a sec. Just a sec. Metabee, preparing?"

Metabee was chuckling: "Kekekekeke... Gotta go fast, heh." Zechs and Ikki waited patiently for the queen to appear. Of all the aliens, she'd be the one they had to kill in person. Just to be sure. Zechs waved at the door: "Oh. Hi."

Everyone turned from Zechs to the opened factory loading door, out of which dozens of Facehuggers streamed, swarming around the massive girth of the queen. She roared. It was like a wind blew through the alley.

...Hold up, a wind _was_ blowing through the alley. Metabee was _glowing yellow._ Ikki stifled a giggle: "Metabee. Target the queen! _MEDAFORCE!_"

_(Now I'd like to explain for a moment what the medaforce is. It's a special power, reserved for the ancient medals that were dug up in the years before medabot production. Sure, a few mass-produced copy medals can learn it but it takes longer to master and isn't as efficient. Long story short, this basically allows the SOFTware part of the medabot, e.g. the SOUL to take total control of the HARDware. The body. This allows it to pull nigh-impossible stunts. In this case, dumping the entire power supply into a great big plasma beam.)_

Night turned into day and Metabee's eyes went bright green as a huge yellow ball of compressed atmospheric gas appeared before him. Using all he had, he condensed it, ignited it and shoved it into the Xenomorph queen's face.

BOOM. Whoosh. The queen's head was mostly blown off. Half the lower jaw was still attached to the neck. The body swayed about for a few more moments like a headless chicken. With a thud, the beast keeled over. Dead.

"Keke...kekeke... ..heh." His power depleted, Metabee fell flat on his face.

It should be noted at this point that all the Xenomorphs _subservient_ to the queen were still standing. And promptly went berserk with bloody revenge on their mind.

The three remaining medabots were pretty much depleted. No battery, no ammo, no armor left to shed.

So when a dozen Xenomorphs and three dozen Facehuggers barreled down upon the dwindling party with more aliens on the way, nobody was suprised when Zechs laughed out loud. He'd gone insane, they thought. Well, not Erika, Ikki or Aki. They knew Zechs had saved their asses and was gloating by this point. Koji and Karin, their medabots and poor Brass, however? Yeah, abject panic.

When a Xenomorph finally jumped for Doctor Aki's face _(who, by the way, didn't flinch)_ Koji couldn't help but scream. Thankfully, it was at this point that *KUNG-TISSH* the _Asgard teleporter _engaged! The most impressive piece of tech aboard the Daedalus, repaired and activated in the nick of time.

Apparently, Doctor Aki's granddaughter knew a thing or two about transporters, thanks to reverse-engineering the ancient tech used by the medabots. Not enough to build a teleporter from scratch, mind you. But enough to work with Jyggalag to get the Daedalus's scrapped systems back in working order.

Once the system was back online he waited behind some cloud cover. When it was time for a tactical retreat, Jygg simply locked onto their comm signals and whisked them off.

Settling into his chair, Zechs looked to Jyggalag: "Thank you for your patience." Jyggalag's hologram let off what sounded like two stones grinding together. His idea of a chuckle. "You wished to lure out their queen, captain. A wise decision, if perhaps not _entirely_ nessecary considering the firepower I possess"

Doctor Aki nodded: "Yes, thank you, Jyggalag, for saving our behinds! ...Say, where are the medabots?"

Jygg seemed to smile: "Reactor chamber. Recharging. I also took the liberty of splitting myself into two holograms to explain things to the... younger members."

Jygg turned back to his captain. "Requesting permission to make a crater, sir." Zechs looked to Aki for permission, who nodded. "Go."

The Daedalus descended through black clouds, hovering ominously above the abandoned factory. Jyggalag's intimidation tactic worked. The scurrying aliens ran into their lair together. A single big, soft target. ...Wait a sec.

"Moment, sir." Jyggalag managed to target three surviving humans. He teleported them out, into the sickbay and Neutra-nurse's care.

The gestating Xeno eggs weren't teleported. Instead they were simply left at the abandoned factory. ...Where gravity took hold and they dropped onto the floor, squirming.

It was at this point that all four plasma cannons aboard the Daedalus began to spark, charging up their magnetic fields, before *SCHWANNNG!* *SCHWANNNG!*

Two salvoes of two. The building and the ground below were crushed, burned, churned and mostly atomized. Nothing survived. The next morning, returning evacuees would find a cordoned off depression coated in sizzling volcanic glass.

Removing his helmet, Zechs, or rather, Milliardo turned to Aki, a mix of amusement and regret in his eyes and half a smile on his lips: "Sorry about blowing up the building, sir."

Doctor Aki chuckled: "Thank you for killing the aliens! Don't worry, it was the only way to be sure!" He placed his hand on Zechs's shoulder before the two men began conversing, telling stories of the past and metal men.

Later that evening, Zechs and Jyggalag promised Ikki and Metabee they'd find Rokusho and that Fawkes guy. It would be courteous to at least _offer_ them a ride.

Though Metabee suggested that Rokusho might prefer becoming a permanent part of the crew. Zechs was certainly going to ask, if not beg Rokusho if the opportunity arose. That little bot could fight!

It was around this point that Karin took Jyggalag aside and whispered something into his ear, or rather, the side of his head: "Darien has told me something. I don't want Zechs to hear this. He... ...I don't trust him to take this seriously. But I trust you. Will you listen?"

Jyggalag's head turned. Diagonally, then up. A nod.

Karin began her tale. "When we were driving in Koji's car, Fawkes got excited. And then suddenly he got very glum. Got a look in his eyes. Like death.

He turned to me and asked me to tell Zechs something. I'm telling you." Jyggalag nodded respectfully, voicelessly offering Karin a drink by showing her a list via hologram. She pointed at the ice-water. The ship complied.

"Fawkes told me he _recognized_ the guy who caused all this. His name is apparently Tabris. And he goes by the alias of Kaworu Nagisa. Darien said...

He said he's watched a TV show in which Tabris died. Darien thinks that the TV show he watched is real somewhere.

That TV show, that world Tabris is from is apparently called _'EVA'_. It's a world where good will lose and evil will win. And eat humanity. Darien said if you ever come across the world Tabris is from, you should..." Karin told the tale Darien had told her to Jyggalag, who nodded understandingly.

After she had gotten Darien's warning off her chest, Karin stood up, hugged Jyggalag and smiled weakly. Her legs bent and she keeled over from dehydration and sheer exhaustion.

Jyggalag morphed his avatar into very large pillow to break her fall. Nothing quite like holographic technology supplemented by force fields and just a pinch of magic.

Discreetly he contacted Neutra-nurse and together they sped Karin's recuperation from half an hour to half a minute. She walked back to her friends, though she kept Neutra-nurse close.

Jygg sighed. He decided to inform Karin's father figure Doctor Aki by mailing him a video recording of the conversation and subsequent collapse.

Aki replied with a text. "Thx 4 discretion. In a few years, she r healed. Doesnt want friends 2 worry. Strong mind. Body will follow in time. G luck on EVA."

Later that night, Jyggalag uploaded a simplified version of his AI into a whole new set of medals. _(Crystal medals to be specific, designed with deflection and reflection combat techniques in mind)_

Everyone but Zechs departed the Daedalus as it rose back up into the sky, weapons suite and, suprisingly, teleport system fully restored.

The duo decided to commit themselves to finding a computer system capable of calculating trans-reality jumps.

This way they could at least try and hold to their promise of finding and picking up Darien and Rokusho, Once again the Daedalus departed in a flash of blinding light.

_(A few hours earlier, elsewhere in the multiverse):_

Rokusho was still not moving. Nagisa was barely awake. Darien was kicking Nagisa in the back. Repeatedly. "You MURDERED Hobbes! Fucking Angel! You MURDERED- Oh. Hi, G-man. Just when y... ullgh."

Swish. Bonk. With a gesture, the G-man mesmerized Darien and put him to sleep. He hit the ground rather hard, though. Couldn't be helped.

Fawkes was good at complying when things got serious but the G-man wanted a private moment with his former employee.

Nagisa opened his eyes and looked into a face he never, ever wanted to see again. "Tabris..." The G-man hissed.

Nagisa smirked, pulling himself away from the G-man, coughing and ranting and crawling back: "I'm safe from you! I've found a better boss! They've made me stronger! I don't have to go deep cover anymore! No more caring for people I'm about to feed to hell!"

The poor boy sounded manic. G-man sighed as he calmly walked forward. G-man acted like he was angry. Played the part of the wrathful god. It was just an act.

Tabris had betrayed him, yes. But the G-man was happy. He'd _found_ him again. Spooking the poor kid was just a good way to wear out his mind.

Pallid fingers wrapped around the crowbar and yanked it out. It was stained with an orange ichor. Something between pop soda and human meat.

A wistful smile played on the G-man's lips. "Ah, a crowbar... Good memories! ...Which reminds me, Tabris: You've brought yourself, mister Fawkes and mister Rokusho into my home reality! It's always a treat to return to the source."

The G-man cracked his knuckles. He was inspecting the way phsyics flowed around his body. He loved this world. His world.

Though he regretted he'd have to resort to this. He pulled back his arm and whacked a still rambling Tabris over the forehead with the crowbar.

After wiping his hand clean with the small tissue he always kept in his pocket, he turned and dragged the unconcious Tabris off into the void.

Fawkes and the robot would be quite safe on this earth. ...Unless of course they ended up at one of two very specific locations. But what were the odds of _that_?

A security camera extended from the ceiling of the white room. A mechanical woman's voice sing-songed: "WELcome to tHe ApERture SCIence enRICHment CENter. Upon reGAIning CONciousNess and/or CPU acTIvity, plEase proCEEd to the nExt CHAMBer to comMENCE TESting."

-Preview- (Now with 80% less clarity)

..."Where is he? TELL ME!" The Doctor was _livid_. Tabris had been strapped to a chair. He could barely move. The Timeless one, this time wearing the face of a Cardassian, inched forward, teeth bared in a scowl: "TELL US, or I will make you _hurt_!" Fear flashed over Nagisa's eyes. He looked at the Doctor and saw no sympathy, no shock. only burning ice...

...Within the lava lake at the heart of mount Doom, a red haze formed around a certain melting ring and the tormented wail of a TARDIS pierced spacetime...

...Kane turned to Scorpius: "Go home. You have _guests_ to attend to." Scorpius nodded, his lips curling into a cheerful smile. On an abomination like him, it was out of place. Like everything, down to his calm manner and sophisticated accent. What was also out of place was the Daedalus, floating alongside Scorpie's command carrier at the back edge of the galaxy. Very, very far away from Earth...

...The girl was looking down on them, smiling. She threw Rokusho what looked like a wonky gun and a pair of boots. Darien, however, was not so lucky. The girl threw a big, metal ball at his head. Was it... Shouting?: "...aaaaaAAAAAAAAACE!"...

...Einstein, Zechs and Jyggalag looked at each-other. They stared for a long moment. Zechs nodded: "Mission accepted." Jyggalag gave a curt nod in agreement...

..."Oh, Nagisa..." The doctor shook his head. "I may not like guns but I've got _friends_ who don't like guns! Big, stompy friends! And their handlers. Oh, hi Hogarth!" The doctor grinned malevolently at Nagisa as the portal behind him, the portal Eldred and the Timeless one had conjured, the one Hogarth had just stepped out of... suddenly got a whole lot bigger...


	4. Chapter 3: Fork In The Road

**Chapter 3: Fork in the road**

"_Don't worry, I'm going to tell you where they are, both of them. And that's the point. You'll have to choose._"

_-The Joker, The Dark Knight_

"_Well,seems we got here just in the nick of time! What does that make us, Zoe?" "Big damn heroes, sir!" "Ain't we just!"_

_- Mal& Zoe, Firefly_

The reality-warping ambassador some called Einstein stood at the wormhole nexus of John Creighton and Scorpius's universe. Scorpius's command carrier _(city-warship)_ was trying to force open a _wormhole_ with interdimensional tech _(From the Red Council)_. The Daedalus, reality-traversing warship, teleported into Earth's orbit. Einstein seized the opportunity.

He flicked his wrist, causing the wormhole between Earth and its moon to devour the Daedalus. Einstein didn't like intervening but his hand had been forced.

John Creighton was an astronaut from earth. He lived on the Leviathan Moya, a living starship roughly size of the Daedalus. Moya and the people aboard were being chased by Scorpius.

Until a few weeks ago. Scorpius had suddenly dropped his pursuit only for another problem to emerge.

Moya, the aforementioned living starship had a son. The genetically engineered Talyn_._

Talyn was a gunship. Normal Leviathans are weaponless space-freighters like Talyn's mother Moya. Incompetent genetic experimentation had caused Talyn to be born: An incredibly powerful young ship... with a penchance to go berserk and shoot everything.

Aboard Moya, John, Aeryn and their shipmates were having breakfast.

Loudly.

D'argo fell back onto his chair, fork stabbed into a piece of cheese which he was waving at John in a display of contempt: "And you suppose we should leave Talyn's weapons attached?"

Chiana, D'argo's young sorta-girlfriend stood up at the table. "Would you want your mivonks cut off? It would fix your rage issues!" She flicked her dinner knife as if to demonstrate.

John sighed: "That's different, pip. D'argo's a Luxan. Talyn is an experiment."

Aeryn had to agree with John: "Talyn is both a warship and a Leviathan. His young mind can't handle the conflicting instincts. It appears Crais's shoddy work has made him... unstable."

She felt John's comforting hand on her shoulder. "...In spite of our best efforts, Talyn is starting to lose his mind. We need to make sure he can't hurt anyone else."

It was hard to admit defeat. Aeryn loved Talyn like a son. The feeling was mutual.

Fickle Chiana sat down and rested her head on the dinner table. "Okay. I guess it's best for all of us. So how are we gonna do this?"

Rygel, the diminutive deposed monarch who'd been strangely silent throughout the discussion chose this exact moment to speak up: "You should know: John, Aeryn and Crais have contacted _Scorpius_. We're to fly into his command carrier and _trust_ him."

"YOU WHAT!"

Rygel smirked and swiveled his hover chair around. D'argo and Chiana were easy to agitate.

However he knew the crew would accept Scorpius's offer in spite of his ...gentle nudge toward the contrary. ...Frell.

Hovering next to a rather large wormhole, Scorpius's command carrier hummed with an unnatural red aura.

Within the reactor chamber, several interesting cylinders had been activated once again, alleviating the experimentation's power requirements. The Super Solenoid Modules were working well.

Doctor Manhattan had been kidnapped by the Red Council. In return, the Blue Council asked the G-man to bring in Nagisa. They weren't taking their compatriot's loss very well. At all.

"Where is he? TELL ME!" The Doctor was _livid_. Tabris had been strapped to a chair. He could barely move.

The Timeless one, this time wearing the face of a Cardassian, inched forward, teeth bared in a scowl: "TELL US, or I will make you _hurt_!"

Fear flashed over Nagisa's eyes. He looked at the Doctor and saw no sympathy, no shock. only burning ice.

Nagisa didn't want to be tortured but he was more concerned with what he saw when he looked at the Doctor. Such rage... Disappointment? No. Resignation and despair.

Something Nagisa himself saw in the mirror every morning. Well, as much as he had mornings. Though being a time traveller, he was sure the Doctor knew how that was too...

"Have you ever died, Doctor?" The question caught the Time Lord off guard. He snarled at the Angel. ...Angel. What a name for the harbingers of devastation...

"Yes, yes I have, Tabris. What would you like to know about it?" He spat the words at the little monster. The Doctor had been tracking Nagisa ever since he began to travel the Multiverse.

The Doctor had saved the G-man from being eaten by Vortigaunts _(Vortigaunt trials are awesome...)_ hoping to get Nagisa from him. Instead the Doctor found out Nagisa'd been offered _better_ employment: Planet looting.

Kill the people on a colony, drag their tech back home to his masters. That the Doctor had considered tutoring Nagisa disgusted him.

Nagisa wasn't smiling, instead he was measuring up the Doctor: "Have you ever died for someone other then yourself?"

Again, the Doctor barely held back the urge to rip the hybrid's core out of his chest. He spoke with gritted teeth: "Half a dozen times. It's the noblest thing you could ever possibly do."

He looked into Tabris's eyes... Something changed in the Doctor's voice. Trepedation. _A chance._ "Why do you ask? Why do you even _care?_" The Doctor was still really _very_ angry... But curious.

Kaworu Nagisa's will had snapped. He wasn't under anyone's thumb for the moment. No father figure within reach to look strong for. So he cried. Strapped to a chair, the Timeless One still parsing through Cardassian torture devices and he cried.

Nagisa cleared his throat of phleghm and looked the Doctor in the eye: "I am _finished_ with this nonsense. Yes, I'm a fallen Angel, what a pun! Yes I've become a monster working for bigger monsters. But ask me! ASK ME WHY!"

The Doctor recoiled. He looked up, into Tabris's eyes. "Okay. Why? Why did you die? Who did you die for and why in the name of Pond did you accept the _G-man_'s offer to bring you back?"

Nagisa's chin rose, tears dripping onto the paper floor: "Back home I decided to let myself be killed by a boy who needed me. A boy who needed _help. _I left him alone to be eaten by the world. Because I would have had to kill him had he not killed _me_.

I live with that. Every day. And I accept it. What I _refused_ to accept was to be used as a bludgeon, a playing card by that _MONSTER_ that promised me another chance. The monster that brought me _here_." Tabris's free arms gestured wildly at the sickening white void.

"But to get away I had to do _more_ things. Kill, steal... It was a lesser evil. I... did what I had to to stay alive. To see... To see what had happened to Shinji..."

Sobbing, descending to the floor from a float, having long since snapped out of his restraints, Nagisa fell into the Doctor's arms, who hugged him tight. After a while, the Doctor whispered: "You're free, I promise you're free, but you can't make it all good again. You've _killed_ people."

Nagisa found his grip and he wobbled to his feet. He nodded at the Time Lord. "I want to repent. I want... need to at least balance the tally."

The Doctor placed his hands on the boy's shoulders: "First thing, then: your bosses have enslaved our friend. We need him back."

At this point a smile graced Kaworu Nagisa's face. Not the smile he always wore, the smile he got from enjoying the world around him. No, this smile was smaller. Here, _wherever the heck he was,_ there was no world to enjoy, just white. ...This was a smile of revelation. Of _liberation_.

That small smile heralded a choice. A betrayal toward the ones who gave him life and power. A choice that would propagate and coalesce into Nagisa's wings.

Within a billion galaxies throughout spacetime and the multiverse, the total amount of life jaunted to a slightly higher number and a legend formed about an Angel. A winged boy who would drop from the sky, Lance in hand, and break evil in half. A redeemed demon who had fought alongside the memories from the other stories.

Apparently, Kaworu mused, he was the Angel of Free Will after all. After imbibing a very long breath, Kaworu told the Doctor of Sanghelios: The planet where the Red Council had set up camp. He told the Doctor of a machine they'd built. A machine that could do the impossible.

^_^ ^_^ ^_^ X_X ^_^ ^_^ ^,,^

Sanghelios was a planet with an interesting history. One of very few places in the multiverse where two universes actually crossed over into one-another.

Such places were a nightmare. If you weren't careful, you'd end up in a place connected to a hellworld. This had happened at the cynically named Sunnydale.

Or you'd be close to a universe _almost_ like your own, which was equally bad. Just ask a man called Walter.

Sanghelios was a beautiful place, once. It had been steeped in the charities of not one, but two omnipotent civilizations. It was the site of an embassy, the place where the Time Lords, the species the Doctor once belonged to, met with the almost as powerful Forerunners.

Both species were fond of shiny clothes, imposing space stations and bending spacetime like it was silly putty. Oh and making the local wildlife more awesome.

The Sangheli were a warrior race. Big, beautiful lizards. Code of honor, wisdom. And fiercely independent! So when both their parent species were wiped out it didn't take the Sangheli long to loosen the definition of their 'guard dog' duty and caniballize the old embassies and science stations to advance their own civilization.

Then disaster struck. War, followed by a plague of ravenous beasts. Beasts which could best be described as steel-plated space sharks. Mouths with tails. The Sangheli _(or the Covenant Elites as they called themselves by now)_ evacuated en masse.

The surface of their planet was eaten. They'd rebuild later for their allies were at war with Brutes. Among their allies was humanity.

Long story short, the world was abandoned and when the steelsharks eventually chewed everything into dust even they moved on.

Then the Red Council settled in. Their founder, the Time Lord with the big omnipotent glove, had simply barged in, leading half a million Tau.

They had begun constructing something. Something very very big. The Sangheli tried to reclaim their homeworld but a forcefield _(powered by the very big thing)_ barred their way.

Thankfully, this did not stop the Blue Council for they had two magi capable of teleportation, a secret agent man capable of teleportation ...and the TARDIS.

The Doctor looked over the crest of a small hill, into the mists of time. He could see the battles that had raged in the past. Over land and resource. By Prophets. Elites. Forerunners. Daleks. Time Lords. The Time Lord wearing the stetson rolled his neck and snapped out of it. Now wasn't the time. Literally.

The Doctor was watching a city. A city made of dirt-brown metal. The only reason it didn't look ramshackle was because it had been built according to a pre-set pattern and with very durable composite materials.

The homes of the Tau he'd wager. Tau were a silly species. Didn't live long. Literally lived and breathed for the Greater Good. No individualism. A Tau _(singular)_ was clever. Genius clever. But they always followed orders, never doubting, never wavering. Reminded the Doctor of another group.

At the center of the carbonum-plated frontier city, there was a sphere. Or, well, a bunch huge rings spinning into each-other, revolving and swiveling around a huge glowing ball. It looked quite a bit shinier then the city. Quite a bit larger too.

If it reminded the Doctor of a reactor, that's because it was. If it reminded him of a prison... that's because it was a prison too. Small slits like ley lines ran along the outer edges of the rings, glowing a baleful red.

Under the gigantic effigy stood a building. It looked like a science facili... Ack! The Doctor clutched his ears. A sound like ripping of paper, but far more intense, was coming from the twisting ringsphere.

He felt sick to his stomach. He tried several times to look at the science facility, but every time, he got queasy and disoriented. Something was _wrong_. It was just your average evil science facility. But with Doctor Manhattan's energies, they were pushing around the laws of time and space.

The Doctor knew this. Because his head hurt like hell.

After regaining his senses, the Doctor looked had gone back into the void to run an errand for him after leading the Blue Council to Sanghelios. Eldred was constructing a large stone temple through magic and magic alone. His sidekick Zyzyx fluttered by the Doctor's head, murmuring something about 'overabundance of railguns' and 'target-rich enviroment on both sides'. The Timeless one had left to contact the crew of the Daedalus. After Nagisa had gone, the Doctor had broken his hand. Relatedly, the G-man was unconcious.

Over the ridge, at the heart of the Tau city, the sphere had begun to spin. It was generating power, which flowed into the science facility. **"Extraction commenced."** Kane sat down on the stairwell, looking over the shoulder of Marduk and the man with the omnipotent glove. Marduk had suggested this course of action, but apparently something was going wrong.

"It can't generate enough power. The item isn't coming through!" A Tau technician made the mistake of speaking against two very destructive entities. A glove was raised and lowered again because a fireball had already struck the poor grey alien clean in the chest.

"You know it's not their fault, right?" Kane sniped at the demon_(s). _Marduk scoffed at the grand general. "Action leads to reaction, my friend. They fail, they burn. We fail... We burn. Let's not fail." Kane nodded grimly. "Thanks for the pep talk. I'll go pound the troops into shape. But first, lunch. Good luck, guys." Kane exit stage left.

Marduk snarled at the red energy swirling above the telepad infront of him. This abomination of a machine was the thing that had brought him back to life. A 'paradox machine'. A machine that could rip an object, any object, from spacetime anywhere and deposit it where they were.

Of course, the original object was still part of causality. Not that it mattered because the Red Council was using the machine to copy stupidly powerful weapons and give them to conjured-up allies.

Marduk knew it wasn't going to last. But he would make it last as long as he could and when his time came, he would drag everyone down with him. He would _not _be denied _again_.

Far above, at the heart of the reactor, Doctor Manhattan screamed in pain. The ringsphere siphoned the energy he consisted of, his very lifeforce, out of him. The procedure was excruciating. It pulled him apart, twisted him like a pretzel, toyed with his very _nature_.

He wasn't just being used as a power source. Manhattan had sensed the power sources that had been constructed. After a few runs, any one of them would have sufficed ten times over. They used him because he was a reality warper. Just what they needed. Soon, the strain would lead him to forget. A mercy, in a sense. ...But until then, the blue-turning-red demigod felt so very wrong.

Mordor, Middle-Earth: the fruit of Doctor Manhattan's pained labours was becoming visible. Within the lava lake at the heart of mount Doom, a red haze formed around a certain melting ring and the tormented wail akin to that of a TARDIS pierced spacetime. Though Sauron would die at that moment in time on Middle-Earth, in another book on another page, Doctor Manhattan nearly dissolved from strain as _(a temporal shadow of)_ the One Ring appeared on the Paradox Machine telepad on Sanghelios.

_(It should be noted that paradoxing god-level entities out of their destined death in spacetime is not only very difficult but also very very stupid. Especially this one.)_

The man wielding the glove chuckled. He turned toward the inactive Terminator sitting in the corner. Carefully, the ring was picked up with the glove. Sparks flew. A black haze tried to enter the glove but its owner pushed Sauron's influence back. He slipped the ring onto the pacified and re-programmed T-X. Marduk chuckled: "I now pronounce you God and Machine. You may now exploit the overwhelming power _without_ succombing to the demon inside, for you are but steel and spark."

The T-X rose. She analyzed the new... addition... to her hardware: "Combat, stealth and transport efficiency increased beyond limits of measurement. Orders?" Her... its chin rose in daughterly pride. Or a simulation thereof. Whatever got the job done. The man in the glove chuckled. "Well, my dear..."

Below, in the cafetaria, Scorpius had picked out his lunch. Beautiful dishes from his nemesis Creighton's homeworld of Earth. Apparently Kane was from there as well...

"Pancake?" Scorpius was eating quickly. Neatly, but quickly. Kane observed his colleague's precise high-speed table manners and chuckled: "Yeah, sure."

After regaling to Scorpius the virtues of _cheese_ pancakes and the sorry state their army was in, they walked off to the trans-reality transport hub together, whilst Kane parsed through some Tau trans-reality probe data.

Kane was the gloved man's spymaster and military commander, which meant he was the most powerful man on base. Or, well, he would be if it weren't for a certain piece of omnipotent handwear.

Scorpius was 'just' the PR guy. Because he was, like Kane, a capable strategist and agent, their boss had sent him to work recruiting new, promising recruits. Kane liked that most of Scorpius's recruits were sane. Sane and capable of blowing up main battle tanks unarmed.

Kane turned to Scorpius: "Go home. You have _guests_ to attend to." Scorpius nodded, his lips curling into a cheerful smile. On an abomination like him, it was out of place. Like everything, down to his calm manner and sophisticated accent. What was also out of place was the Daedalus, floating alongside Scorpie's command carrier at the back edge of the galaxy. Very, very far away from Earth.

"SToP! ThAT is noT A VIable roUTE fOr TESting!" GLaDOS, the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System watched in horror and professional disapproval as the small grey robot bashed through another door. "HAMMER FIST!" The Aperture Science Facility doors were tough, but they weren't indestructible. Well, they were.

Which was why they slammed into the back of the next chamber, embedding themselves into the moon-plaster wall. The hinges... There's yer problem.

Panels retracted and the room reformed. A maze of steep ramps, black walls and turret guns. ...Turret guns? One of the adorable, I-pod-esque turrets rested its targeting laser onto Rokusho's helmet. "I see you.." A hail of bullets was sprayed into the wall that Rokusho had very swiftly ducked behind.

"WEll doNe, ANdroid. YOu are An exCELLent tEST SUBject. ProCEed to tHe UPper LEvel foR PAckAginG and SHIpping. ...Or Be eXeCUTEd fOr InsubOrdiNAtion." It was at this point that the side walls folded back to reveal dozens upon dozens of turret bots. They were sweeping the chamber below for any sign of the rebellious android.

Each one was armed with a large amount of persuasion. They looked as cute as a threeway mix between a traffic cone, a puppy and an AK-47 could possibly be. Area denial and hollowpoint bullets are the best way to cure non-compliance in androids.

Thankfully, Rokusho wasn't alone. He sprinted back toward the entrance of the chamber he had just 'solved' to find his compatriot leaning against a wall. Darien was smiling. "Good solution. Cutting the knot, so to speak."

Rokusho bowed his head at the man: "Indeed. I was wondering... When we met yesterday... When I saved your life, you knew my name. You seemed to know a lot more." Rokusho put his back to the wall beside Darien. They were taking a break, well aware that the insane A.I. of the Aperture Science facility had a camera trained on them.

Darien chuckled. "Where I'm from, you're a cartoon. A cartoon and a videogame and comics and a whole lot more. Ikki's the star though. Ikki and Metabee. You're a side character." Rokusho tilted his head and stared into Darien's eyes.

"That's not to say you're less important, of course!" Darien chuckled. "I guess I'm fiction too, somewhere. ...I hope I'm a movie. I mean technically I am a superhero and all." Darien chuckled: "Darien Fawkes, superspook. Which reminds me: I've read a lot and seen a lot but I haven't heard of.. eh.. her." Darien pointed at GLaDOS's camera.

Darien and Rokusho were leaning nonchelantly against the side of the test chamber. Darien looked up into the camera, up at at GLaDOS: "Okay, so I don't know you. Do you know us?"

"No, but yOU ACTuaLLY sPEAK to me, WHIch iS mOre tHEN I cAn saY abOUT tHe NEXt moST INteRESTing hUman." Rokusho scraped his sword against the test chamber wall, waiting and analyzing Darien.

Darien shrugged. "Okay. Thanks, I guess. Question:" He snapped his fingers. "Do you know about the multiverse? Because we're from different universes, both of us, and we want to get back home. If not home, anywhere but here will do.

...If you want us gone, sending us across the multiverse would be the best way to go. Trying to kill us _won't_ be the best way. Believe me, it won't." Darien wagged his finger at the camera.

GLaDOS replied by rearranging the test chamber, removing any cover the hallway offered, placing Darien and Rokusho in the firing line of three turrets, with twenty to pass to get to safety. "THAnk yOU for REAsonING wITH mE, iT waS vEry maTUre, bUT cOMpany POLicy reGARding ALterNATE UNIverses iS EXploiTATion. PleASE coMMENce TESting."

Darien snarled at the turrets. "Have it your way." He placed his hand on Rokusho's shoulder. They both disappeared from sensors after quicksilver flowed over them. A few moments later, the clanging of running metal feet was heard.

A turret was launched into another turret as if it had been hit by a trailer truck. A few were cut jaggedly, sparks and wires bleeding out of the cracked exostructure. Most were left to flail their targeting lasers confusedly.

And then the wall adjacent to the elevator was cut open, pulled apart... A tunnel was cut and ripped into existence by a three foot tall invisible robot. A tunnel that led into the elevator shaft.

After having climbed upward for over a dozen floors without any sort of mechanical resistance, Rokusho and Darien emerged at what looked like a virtual reality chamber. Video screens lined the walls and a weird scorched box was embedded into one of them. They heard a whistle. It came from the scaffolds above the chamber. From a girl. A girl flanked by two androids. One orange, one blue.

The girl was looking down on them, smiling. She threw Rokusho what looked like a wonky gun and a pair of boots. Darien, however, was not so lucky. The girl threw a big, metal ball at his head. Was it... Shouting?: "...aaaaaAAAAAAAAACE!" He barely dodged it.

The ball seemed to be ranting... Not in a bad way, though: "Wow. Flying. Flying through the air after being to space. So much space. Space and Wheatley. And wheat. Fake wheat. Holograms and lies. Could see real wheat from space. Want to get back to space. Hi! HI! Are you from space?"

Darien put a finger to his lips and pulled up the sphere with his other hand. He held the sphere's massive camera/eye to his face. "Listen close. There's something even better then space. The space between space. The _multiverse._"

...Rokusho had conversed with the lady and the robots. They had explained to him what he should do. _Fwip_, he shot a blue portal at the end of the shaft. _Fwip_, an orange one at his feet.

Instant wormholes. Very, very useful. Using the portal gun that had been intergrated into his blade arm and the safe-fall system now attached to his legs, Rokusho had found his way into the 'backstage' area of Aperture Science. He booted up a computer and began entering in the keywords the blue robot had told him.

After Darien and the sphere decided together the A.I. sphere would be called Ace _(from space)_ they began discussing the multiverse and the fact that anything, ANYTHING could be possible. Excitedly.

...Then the lights dimmed and a voice boomed over the speakers. ...A blue portal was plopped down on a wall near Darien and Rokusho flew out of it, pirouetting in mid air before landing on one knee with an audible clink. Darien whistled. "Neat."

"Greetings, multiversal travelers!"The voice of Cave Johnson echoed through Aperture Science. "I'm the founder of this here facility. I know what you're thinking: 'Cave, you're dead!' Well I _am_ dead but some of my scientists have managed to write a program that pretends to be me. Well, pretends to be Cave. I'm not actually Cave. Call me Imitation-Cave.

...Imitation-Cave Johnson here! Acting as ambassador to Aperture Science for the Multiverse! I'm currently overriding the active A.I., the lovely GLaDOS, ...sorry dear, just doing my job... to show you out. Yes, _out_."

Darien and Rokusho looked at each-other. Darien's eyebrow rose. Rokusho's LED eye imitated the same. They spoke in unison: "Why?"...

"Advertising!" Imitation-Cave chuckled. "The best way to get brand-awareness out into the multiverse is to send living billboards through so they can inform all their friends about Aperture Science!"

Rokusho raised his blade. "When you say living billboards.." Darien scanned the now dimly-lit room "...You're not being metaphorical, are you?" Imitation-Cave sucked his digital teeth. "...You're a clever bunch. Unfortunately, the ad-placement surgery removes all personal identity. On the upside, you'll still be alive! Well, technically.

Which reminds me: Robot buddy over there is gonna have to be euthanized. I'm sorry for your loss... Let's go." The lights dimmed to zero and Darien & 'Kusho felt the floor fall away from them.

A voice like that of a school teacher: "Time. Space. Layers. Infinite variations, infinite leaves on a single flower, infinite flowers. Why did you jump into this reality?"

The gray man in the suit with pitch black eyes didn't look mean. But right after the Daedalus had entered this universe, a wormhole had opened, gobbled up the ship, engines be damned, and had deposited Zechs onto an iceberg. With a gray-skinned human staring at him.

Zechs looked at the scientist man, the _Einstein_ and palmed his face. "We're being judged? Okay. I'll see what I can do. But I have a request which would problably be helpful." Zechs crossed his arms and leaned back onto a jut of ice.

"What is your request?" Zechs pouted his lips and tried to contain his rage: "...Allow Jyggalag, the... A.I. of my vessel to manifist his hologram here. He knows more then I do and not knowing his status is making me... emotional."

Zechs purposefully grabbed Dawnbreaker's hilt. Einstein's eyebrows rose. Comprehension of the fleshling's ways dawned and the local god stammered: "T-Thank you for your explaination. Apologies. I did not intend to blackmail you emotionally. I sincerely want..."

He waved his hand into the air and the inert form of the Daedalus came into being in the sky above the duo, immedeately followed by Jyggalag's hologram snapping into existence beside Zechs. "...to, firstly, learn from you, secondly, warn you, and thirdly ask for your help."

Jyggalag inclined his head in gratitude. "Thank you, entity. But you pulled me, or rather, my physical form into this wormhole without informing me first. Doing so was downright _criminal_ and some would kill for retribution. However, I forgive you."

The three men, or, well: one genocidal prince, one multiversal god and one plain old normal god were already conversing. It was their way, and it worked. Time had come for cooler heads to prevail atop the multiversal ice floe.

After Zechs and Jygg had given their story and some readings from the Daedalus, Einstein nodded. "Thank you for the information. It makes logical sense."

Einstein sighed deeply: "You have a multi-universal drive. This is unacceptable. Entering into realities you do not belong is an inherently _dangerous_ action. Events spiral out of balance because an outside force with superior weapons and technology is introduced. The results are always... _cataclysmic_."

Zechs stepped past Einstein's objections, assuming Einstein was just worried about his own back yard: "If you're asking why we've shoved a foreign object into your multiverse... We didn't come to blow you up or conquer you. We're just here to find some guidance.

Our drive's destination is completely random. We jumped from the world of Medabots and ended up in the world of monologuing aliens and wormhole abduction. Not my first choice, but it'll do."

Zechs sighed: "In theory the drive can be steered, but _we_ can't control it. If you want us to leave, however, we'll just spin up the drive and go for another randomized hop."

Einstein pondered Zechs's words. His face didn't show much emotion... Until a smile of dawning comprehension graced his skeletal features.

"I need your help." Both Zechs and Jygg stood bolt straight upon hearing this. An entity who could simply grab up the Daedalus out of spacetime needed help. The being known as Einstein sat down on a jut of ice.

He sighed in exaspiration: "Though my powers within the wormhole nexus are near absolute, I cannot venture outside it into your world.

Picture my universe as a bud on a stem. A stem which also has several flowers. One of which being the universe you entered into. From our bud, our kind has become... most impressive. But should the other universes we are connected to fall into chaos, the effects would also poison our world."

The interdimensional alien sighed in resignation: "I will need your help in cleansing a blight which has poisoned our multiverse. I need you to destroy a warship which has been attempting to force open a wormhole through the use of exotic technology."

Einstein, Zechs and Jyggalag looked at each-other. They stared for a long moment. Zechs nodded: "Mission accepted." Jyggalag gave a curt nod in agreement.

After the Daedalus had been shunted back out into normal space, far, far away from earth, Jyggalag and Zechs discussed Einstein's warning.

...The Daedalus was a big pebble thrown into a small pond, geometrically altering events... They would have to be very careful not to become a tsunami or a hurricane. ...Was it already too late?

^_^ ^_^ ^_^ -_- ^_^ ^_^ ^,,^

Darien had been holding on to 'Kusho for dear life. The medabot had used its newly enhanced long-fall boots to withstand the roughly two-mile fall into Old Aperture, the lower, buried part of the labs. The Space-sphere wasn't as lucky. When he fell onto the ground, he passed through a portal... and slammed into a robotic arm. And another. And another. Darien quicksilvered into the background while a roaring Rokusho bounced Ace the Space Sphere around the surgery room, kicking and slashing robotic arms out of the way as they approached him.

After a few minutes of this violent mechanical ballet, the machinery wasn't much more then a smoking pile of steel and plastic. A hologram activated, revealing the face of Cave Johnson. "Heh... I like your style. When life gives you lemons... Get mad!" The holographic buisnessman chuckled. Beside him, another hologram appeared. The face of GlaDOS's mainframe. Her voice was... Normal? No. But close: "We've been waRMing up the INTerdimensional gate. Where do you want to go?"

Darien's quicksilver coating shattered. He stepped inbetween the two holographic faces. "...Why are you letting us go now?" The holograms exchanged a knowing look. "Well, for one," Cave began, "You activated me. Apparently GLaDOS wants me to run the facility with her. We'll be too busy doing paperwork for the next few weeks to worry about P.R..."

GLaDOS continued: "Of course, the MAIn reason is that you desTROYed my... _our_ manipulator arms. Surgery's cancelled."

Cave's face nodded. "You're not worth the trouble." Darien looked Cave in the eye for a moment. "...Fine. But go back on your word and we'll yank out your mainframe." Cave's face rolled its eyes. "...Okay, we're done here, GLaDOS, dear, please show our guests the door."

GLaDOS's eye flickered and the wall to the surgery room fell away, revealing a gigantic vault door, which swung open to reveal... a standard-sized portal, flickering like a stargate which had eaten one too many skittles.

Rokusho chimed. "Sending you readings of a starship within my database. It can travel interdimensionally. If your gate works the same way, hopefully you can lock on to its core."

GLaDOS's voice came in crisp: "Will do. One moment." The portal's colors coruscated from red to purple to green to yellow... Until they eventually stabilized. A cyan hue signified that the portal had been anchored to the Daedalus. Whatever it was doing, it was, according to GLaDOS, in a universe which contained a small amount of magic and a _lot_ of tech.

Before the duo stepped through the portal, GLaDOS had one more thing to say. "The boy who BrOUGht you here was ABducted by another. Designated G-man. He almost destroyed our world. WE're lying low to let the humans REbuild. If you find him... Please murder him."

Nodding solemnly at the request, Darien muttered he'd consider it and stepped through. Rokusho followed, silent.

Back on Sanghelios, the Blue Council had begun setting up a staging area. Before he'd left, the Timeless one had helped Eldred conjure up a portal. A portal which could be directed to just about anywhere.

At the moment Eldred was using it to funnel in heavy reinforcements from all five gods of his homeworld. This wasn't a normal day and though he was loathe to call in favours like this, they needed an army.

Dragons and Rhinoks and Gnomes armed with all sorts of weapons poured out of the portal. Then Toldor stepped through. The eldest of the Ents. The oldest living thing from Eldred's adopted home.

The air began buzzing with magic. Eldred smiled, for he knew what was about to happen. When Toldor opened his old eyes, every single creature in the area was covered in a personal shimmering bubble of energy.

The Doctor tapped his finger on the inside of his shield. It sounded like a Xylophone. Felt like plate glass. Curious...

Before the Doctor could start devising a tune to play on the forcefield, Nagisa teleported in. Nagisa asked Eldred to direct the portal toward a boy named Hogarth Hughes. A young soldier the Doctor had apparently known in the past.

Eldred started chanting and the portal started shuddering. Nagisa locked eyes with the Doctor and strode up to him. They stood silently for a moment.

Nagisa scraped his throat: "Sensei, I've got to ask... Legends say you're a destroyer and healer all rolled into one... And I can see you have impressive friends but at the end of the day you're not... ...Ehm..." Nagisa realized he had talked himself into a corner.

"Not armed."

Oh, Nagisa..." The doctor shook his head. "I may not like guns but I've got _friends_ who don't like guns! Big, stompy friends! And their handlers. Oh, hi Hogarth!" The doctor grinned malevolently at Nagisa as the portal behind him, the portal Eldred and the Timeless one had conjured, the one Hogarth had just stepped out of... suddenly got a whole lot bigger.

Hogarth frowned at the Doctor. "You called us here to fight a war?" Hogarth's friend, the Iron Giant, stepped through the portal in all his glory. A gargantuan metal man. A machine designed to burn entire worlds to dust. An amnesiac. An innocent hero who had managed to channel and master the rage inherent in his programming. Over the years he'd saved hundreds of lives. Mostly in secret.

The giant was immedeately tackled by one of the dragons. It was a glomp, not an assault. The dragon was the size of a chicken compared to the hundred-foot-tall machine, so the Giant decided to pick it up and _tickle _it. The dragon's baritone reverb voice broke down into a giggle. It was the strangest sound the sands of Sanghelios had heard in centuries.

The Doctor sighed and looked the young soldier in the eye. "I know you're reluctant to fight, Hogarth. I know. But I wouldn't have sent for you if it wasn't nessecary." The duo walked through the makeshift camp of coral monoliths. "A friend of mine... A really powerful friend is being held captive in that building over there."

The Doctor pointed over the ridge. "They're using his abilities to power their machine. It's pulling apart space and time and basically ripping reality in half. ...And it's killing him. I know the technology and it's not something even he can power for long"

Hogarth nodded. "I trust this is a good fight. I trust _you. _So does the big guy. ...Still, he won't enjoy going all-out." The Doctor smiled wistfully at the former cadet who had saved his bacon so long ago. The Giant fought a Dalek to a standstill. Then the Doctor modified the weapons. Dalek went splat. And then Hogarth had clocked the Doctor for bringing a Dalek to his world. Rightly so.

Nagisa had caught up to the two men, nodding respectfully at Hogarth and bowing his head toward the Doctor. After some smalltalk Hogarth broke off and headed back to talk to Eldred. Not every day you meet a wizard.

Nagisa shook his head, grinning after witnessing Doctor's ace in the hole: "You called in a favour from an army kid and a pacifist war machine. ...Did not see that coming." The Doctor chuckled: "It's cheesy, but yes: the good guys win because we help each other."

Nagisa looked up at the sky. "The Red Council helps each-other out as well. Evil is learning." The Doctor looked at the sky alongside Nagisa, amused he'd spotted the Sangheli warships in orbit on his own. The Timelord glanced at his pupil: "If evil learns a little more about sharing, they might learn how to get along with us... And how evil are they then?"

Nagisa smiled: "Ah, right. Didn't ever look at it like that... That _would_ be a healthy turn of events. I guess I'm not the first frenemy you've made?" The Doctor sighed and looked out at the stars.

"No. In fact, you remind me of my best friend. Selfish bastard. Crazy, tortured... And brillant. Witty. With quite the flair for the dramatic! In the end he died saving my life by taking revenge. Or the other way around. I hope he's still alive somewhere. Really do." A few minutes later, the Doctor and his apprentice turned and walked back to camp to prepare for the grim task ahead.

The Daedalus didn't have a hyperdrive. It had been blown up long before Zechs or even the Doctor got their hands on it. Zechs and Jyggalag were limited to sub-light, no matter how many other cool gadgets they had.

Moya didn't have this problem. Leviathans could Starburst. It wasn't a candy, but a special way of transport: You slip behind the three-dimensional universe, to someplace far away. Someplace safe.

Moya and the Daedalus nearly collided when she emerged mere feet from its bow. Moya could somewhat direct her starbursts but in her hurry to get to the ship Creighton was so interested about, she may have cut it a bit close.

Thankfully, Jyggalag directed the Daedalus's maneuvering thrusters away from the bronze space whale whilst she herself banked hard right.

A quick scan confirmed it. "They are unarmed"

"They are heavily armed" Moya's Pilot, a giant crustacean bonded to the bioship, warned Creighton. "Magnetic weapons, explosive missiles..." Pilot shuddered for a moment. "And plasma weapons on par with _Talyn_'s main cannon."

Creighton holstered Winona (his pulse pistol). His best friend D'argo grabbed his Luxan Qualta blade and placed it in the scabbard behind his back.

Rygel followed the duo on their way to the hangar "If they're this well armed, they've got a mindset of violence, Creighton"

It was at this point that Creighton had to stifle a chuckle. "I'd think so, sparky. They're humans after all." D'argo's jaw dropped: "What? _These_ are members of your species? You said you could barely escape your planet's gravity well and they have weapons on par with the Nebari!"

Their Nebari crewmember, jailbait Chiana chose this moment to fall out of a maintainance duct in front of them. She didn't say anything. Just grinned the psychotically cheerful grin she always grinned when she had murder in mind.

"Don't worry, Chiana, if they're dangerous, we'll either befriend them or kill them and take their ship." Rygel chuckled.

John groaned. This wasn't gonna be an easy reunion. He saw the markings on the ship. BC-304. DAEDALUS. It was an earth ship alright. This could mean one of a few things.

One, his earth had something happen that completely changed it and made them willing and able to assemble this boat. He didn't deem it likely.

Two, they're from the future or the multiverse or something. He thought this was a likely option.

Three, he's wrong. It's not an earth boat. It's a bunch of aliens.

Then there was option number four: It was all an illusion designed to trick Creighton. Considering Scorpius had been absent lately, considering all the other things he's ran in to... it was problably a trick. But this time he wasn't the only one on the boat. This time he could ask his friends what they thought was going on.

Aeryn had gone to her room to pick up a second pulse pistol. She strode into the hangar bay. "I think Scorpius is setting you up." Oh Aeryn, not you too. It's possible they're real... It's possible...

Creighton shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. It's a trap. Okay, everyone be ready to either run or draw your guns. Pilot, have the DRD's _(Maintainance drones)_ cluster around the hangar. If things go bad..."

"Affirmative, Creighton. But Moya trusts this vessel. She considers it-"

"This is Zechs Marquis, captain of the trans-reality warship Daedalus. Permission to beam aboard?"

Creighton coughed. "Say what. That's an awful big title you have there. I understood every word, don't get me wrong... Er.. Yeah, beam aboard. Amaze us."

A chuckle from the other side of the line. "Will do."

Kunng-Tissh. This was the second time Zechs was disassembled into his component atoms, warped through a thin layer of space by an immensely powerful energy field and put back together on the point of arrival. To an outside observer, the man in the red military jacket and steel bird helmet appeared in a celestial flash.

He beheld a multicolored crowd of gasps. "Whoaw." The young gray-skinned girl with the white hair exclaimed. The human-looking man and woman in front looked tense. Ready-for-battle tense. Zechs shook his head. "Don't worry. I'm not from your Earth. I'm-"

THUMF. That was a plasma bolt. Fired outside. Zechs reached for his blade, but realized he was surrounded. The humanish woman looked alarmed. "That's Talyn, isn't it?" Her gaze fell upon Zechs. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Our transport... she has a son..."

The squat alien stitting on the hover chair finished her thought. "The boy has issues."

THUMF. THUMF THUMF THUMF.

Zechs's helmet radio crackled: "This is Jyggalag. Permission to return fire? Moya, the ship you are on, is trying to placate her son, but Talyn is angry and well-armed."

Zechs looked upon the crowd. Confused. Scared. Angry. ...He turned to the woman. "I need my ship. Please allow me to disable"-THUMF- "Urgh, disable Talyn.

Creighton snapped his fingers. "Wait, spaceman." He grinned at Zechs and Aeryn. "Can you beam Aeryn into Talyn's bridge? She can calm him." Aeryn was nodding affirmingly while her lover explained. Zechs nodded at the duo and pressed the side of his helmet: "Jygg, you heard the lady. Beam her in."

It felt like being squeezed through a bendy straw. Didn't hurt though, thank the stars. Aeryn fell to the floor. Inertia is a harsh mistress. Talyn was executing combat maneuvers.

Talyn's pilot, Aeryn's old commander Crais, was an idiot. He was the one who had planned Talyn's genesis. The one who now, in theory, was at the controls of this Wonder Weapon. ...He was on the floor screaming his lungs out.

"TALYN, STOP, I BEG YOU." Neural interfaces are funny things. They go both ways.

Aeryn grabbed her wayward nephew's main systems console with both hands. Not to actually try and hit any buttons. She hugged it. "Talyn, I need you to listen to me."

THUMF. THUMPF. The Daedalus was beautiful. It zoomed past them through the windshield. It was rolling and banking... as fast as Moya... With an energy shield protecting it. The shield would buckle in time, though. If not, whomever was piloting the Daedalus wouldn't be dodging in the first place.

"Talyn. You were born a Peacekeeper, just like me, just like Crais." She didn't bother gesturing to the man on the floor. He wasn't there right now, not really.

"But we all defected. Together. I am not your commanding officer but I am your aunt. You know this. I loved your father. Crais is your grandfather. And I am auntie Aeryn and if either of your parents could reach you right now they would tell you to _stop acting out. Cease fire_ and let reason prevail!"

Talyn's main cannon powered down. His other weapons weren't firing. Why? It didn't matter. Perhaps it was just a matter of... oh. That ship. The Daedalus.

Talyn was _jealous._ As the light of the Asgard transporter overwhelmed her, she realized the truth: Talyn wasn't considering the Daedalus a threat to Moya, not in the traditional sense. Talyn thought the Daedalus was trying to woo Moya, or impress her. Talyn was afraid of losing access to his mother.

She embraced Creighton as soon as the light faded. It was time for dinner, Chiana decided. It had been quite a day already and diplomacy was about to begin. She called over half a dozen DRD's... and D'argo, because she didn't know how to cook. Ah well, a wink and a giggle and he'd teach her.

"If only Talyn was as easy to teach..." D'argo said to her as they mixed batter.

During dinner, the spirit within the Daedalus revealed itself. Jyggalag. A knight covered in crystal. He began discussing their mission with Aeryn and Rygel. Rygel was quickly dragged out of the meeting by Chiana at Aeryn's request. The group came to the conclusion they wanted the same thing: The destruction of Scorpius and his wormhole-breaking warship.

While this was going on, two humans and a Luxan were listening in on comms while walking through the corridors of the Daedalus. In hangar bay 2, Zechs and John got into a bit of a disagreement over the nature of the multiverse. John decided he didn't believe Zechs and pulled his pulsepistol _Winona_ on him.

..._Winona_'s muzzle had been cut off by Dawnbreaker, but not before giving Zechs's helmet a serious scorchmark. It later took Jyggalag and Moya's worker drones a lot of work to mend both items. D'argo had thankfully managed to paralyze both John and Zechs. Eventually they talked out their differences in the Daedalus's slammer. Like civilized people.

It was around this time that D'argo discovered something. His sense of sight wasn't the only one he relied on, so he quickly spotted the _invisible green cylindrical transport pod_ in a corner of hangar bay 2. After Zechs and Creighton made a mockery of themselves, he decided to investigate.

It wouldn't de-cloak. It wouldn't open. It wouldn't budge. Until Jyggalag informed him that it was an 'Atlantean Shuttle' and opened the rear hatch.

Once inside, D'argo found it wasn't anything threatening. Just some seats, some controls (Jyggalag kindly removed the DNA-lock) ...and a small supply of guided thermal missiles known as Drones.

...Oh, they could use this. A plan was forming in D'argo's head. After he was beamed back down to Moya, he talked it over with Aeryn and a cooled-off Zechs and Creighton.

They would execute their plan in the morning. That night, a friend of a friend teleported to the Daedalus's location. He materialized in the dead of space, inches from one of the ship's air locks. And knocked on the door.

The next day, the Daedalus had sent a subspace message to Scorpius's Command Carrier asking to get their hyperdrive fixed in exchange for access to multiverse tech. Scorpius had no way of knowing this was the warship that had messed up his side's plans not once but twice.

By this point, Scorpie had lost contact with Nagisa. Always eager to obtain more technology, more knowledge, more power, he allowed the Daedalus into his ship's cavernous interior. The Command Carrier was a floating city. A floating spaceport. But still an ungodly warship.

Its technology was somewhat crude, relying on projectile weapons. However, the recent power boost they had recieved, courtesy of the Super Solenoid Modules, had made it practically invincible.

If Scorpius was from Earth, he would have heard the story of the Trojan Horse. A small invisible cylinder detached from the Daedalus. The fact that it was smaller then a camper van also helped it avoid detection.

On board the invisible shuttle, several people quietly waited for Zechs and Jyggalag's okay signal. Chiana, D'argo (_at the helm)_, John, Aeryn... And a man who had finally revealed his true form. His appearance had shocked Moya's crew and even Zechs. His body was covered in scars and tattoos. Wild hair and rags hung off him. _Now_ they could see why he called himself the Timeless one.

-Preview- (More Foreshadowing)

...After explaining the nature of the multiversal reactor to a damn near salivating Scorpius and walking back out of the room, he caught a glimpse of teal light. A bright flash illuminated the reactor chamber. ...

...Zechs sighed. "Scorpius, I'd like you to meet Kaworu Nagisa..." Darien nodded. Zechs turned toward Rokusho "...and his medabot Tabris."...

...After donning both rings, Scorpius crouched. He called the spirit to him from beyond. Beyond the world, beyond everything and anything he'd ever known. Within the Deep Roads of Thedas, Vengeance left its host to die to the Darkspawn hordes and rushed into Scorpius's body...

...But in another universe, one adjacent to Thedas, another protean spirit sensed the change. He, too, was fighting monsters deep underground. Destroyers in a Dwarven ruin. Nevertheless, the situation was similair enough to sense Vengeance as it passed him. Razah looked up at the sky in importent horror. This was bad...

...Few things could take down the last Iron Giant in open combat. One of those few things was the paradoxed and rebuilt Vayeate Mobile Suit's buster rifle. Sylvanas bared a toothy grin and pulled the trigger...


	5. Chapter 4: Pileup

**Chapter 4: Pileup**

"_What can change the nature of a man?"_

_-A _lot _of people, Planescape Torment_

"_When I thought that I fought this war alone,_  
You were there by my side_, on the front lines._  
_And we fought to believe the impossible..."_

_-War, Poets of the Fall_

_(Combining these two quotes with a certain vision around the midpoint of the coming chapter is gonna be... heh, you'll see. Anyway, on to Zechs.)_

Zechs Marquis was showing Scorpius around the Daedalus.

Scorpius: the half-scarran, half-human _(ish)_ commander of the Command Carrier the Daedalus had been docked in.

Scorpius was a rennaisance man: scientist, wormhole fanatic, strategist and revanchist. Oh, and head of PR for the Red Council.

Apparently, Scorpius's Peacekeeper soldiers could repair the Daedalus's broken hyperdrive. Zechs had already let a few technicians in to begin. The hyperdrive's design was apparently very close to a Leviathans's starburst... Good information to know, Zechs thought. Considering they had two friendly Leviathans waiting for them in a nearby nebula.

Zechs's mind couldn't help but flash to the Leviathan Moya. A brown space whale, biomechanical and tender. She had three tendrils which she used to 'starburst'. She had a son, Talyn, born out of the manipulations of Crais, Talyn's current captain. The Peacekeepers, space Nazis extraordinaire, had a LOT to answer for.

Frustrated with Scorpius and his uncannily accurate guesstimations regarding the Daedalus and it's crew, Zechs squeezed the hilt of his blade.

...Crap, Scorpie noticed. Scorpius could read people they were an open book. Even strangers.

Speaking of strangers...

Moya's crew, joined by the definitely very strange Timeless One, were waiting for an opportune moment to detach from the ship's hull and infiltrate the Command Carrier.

The fact that they were waiting in an invisible cylindership only the size of a van both helped and hurt their cause. It helped because tiny little shuttles are hard to detect while cloaked. It hurt because cabin fever. Especially considering the _eclectic_ bunch of individuals on board.

There was Ka D'argo, the Luxan who'd come up with the plan: A nice guy and a very skilled fighter. He looked like one of his parents was a squid and the other a walrus. Nevertheless, he was quite easygoing when not under stress.

There was Chiana, D'argo's on-again off-again girlfriend. Gray-skinned, gifted with superior senses and catlike agility... She was the mercurial thief type. Having fled from a brutal collectivist society at a young age, she was also a bit _unhinged_.

The other two people who'd come on the puddlejumper, the invisible shuttle, were John Creighton and Aeryn Sun. Lovers fleeing from the Peacekeepers: John was just an earth-human, transplanted into this backwater area of the galaxy some 3 years ago. Aeryn Sun, a renegade peacekeeper, fell in love with him. Especially when they saved each-other's lives during the firestorm that followed John's arrival in Peackeeper space.

John was also special in that he knew about Wormhole tech. The same tech that Scorpius had now apparently mastered.

Consider, for a moment, what happens when you open a wormhole inside a star, and make the other end appear in front of a starship or on a planet's surface.

Yeah.

Now consider there are far more _interesting_ things one can do with a teleportation gate, as demonstrated often by Rokusho.

Back on the Daedalus...

After explaining the nature of the multiversal reactor to a damn near salivating Scorpius and walking back out of the room, Zechs caught a glimpse of teal light coming from the multiversal drive behind him. A bright flash snapped across the the reactor chamber.

The sound of the hinges of a door shutting preceded the teal light's dissipation.

When his eyes adjusted, or, well, his helmet's lenses de-polarised, he saw Darien Fawkes and Rokusho sitting on the floor, dazed but seemingly allright.

Darien Fawkes: the invisible man with knowledge of many fictions. And Rokusho the meditative Medabot. ...Hm, looked like Rokusho had gotten an upgrade on his gauntlets.

Darien's dazed gaze drifted across Scorpius and Zechs. He just raised an eyebrow, shook his head like a wet dog would do and pushed himself back up.

"Hey, Zechs. ...oh." He didn't realized for a moment, but he didn't recognize the man in the leather armor. As in, hadn't seen him before. Even on TV.

Darien did notice the half-scarran looked an awful lot like Darth Vader without the mask... oh crap he could run into Vader...

Anyway, that kind of aesthetic was usually _bad_. I mean, black leather? Yeah, _no._

Realizing that a veritable treasure trove of intel had just fallen into Scorpius's lap, Zechs sighed in resignation: "Scorpius, I'd like you to meet Kaworu Nagisa..."

Darien's pupils dialated for a moment. 'He gets it. Good.'

Zechs turned toward Rokusho "...and his medabot Tabris."

Rokusho nodded imperceptibly.

Zechs couldn't risk those two saying anything they shouldn't. Zechs couldn't risk them saying _anything at all_ that would make the razor-sharp Scorpius think "Multiverse."

Sadly, by accidentally picking Scorpius's apprentice as an alias, he had just painted "Killed Favourite Kid" on his helmet with neon violet ink. Along with crosshairs.

Scorpius's eyes narrowed. Nobody noticed.

"Pleased to meet you. If I may..." Scorpius's voice was soft, civil.

Inside his head, gears were whirring, and not literally this time. For Peacecraft to use the alias he did meant that these people knew where Nagisa was. They'd most likely killed him.

Scorpius had no illusions about Nagisa. The young Angel still had the spark of conviction in him, but his desire to do 'good' was swamped by a sea of grief and a web of guilt.

He realized he was standing inside a ship capable of dealing with _Tabris_, an entity capable of imploding a reinforced concrete pillar into gravel with his brain alone.

So he played dumb, if only for a moment. "If I may..." he repeated, in his soft, schmoozing voice: "Are you a part of this crew?" Darien raised a questioning eyebrow eyebrow at Zechs.

Rokusho spoke up: "We are fellow travelers. We met commander Marquis a while ago and decided to catch up to him with the help of some artificial intelligences of... _ambiguous_ morality."

Rokusho had checked the validity of his answer with Jyggalag in the blink of an eye. They were both machines, so they could talk quickly and silently over the radio.

Jyggalag hadn't shown himself since Scorpie came aboard, but was keenly aware of events. There was no point in lying about the big stuff. The details, however...

Darien shook hands with Scorpius. "Pleased to meet you, mister...

"Scorpius." He replied icily, a small smile on his thin lips.

Darien shivered. "If I may, we'll be talking with Jy..."

_Wait, can't see him. Scorpie problably doesn't know._

"...Er.. _Mister Marquis_ in a few moments. We'll be waiting in the cafetaria, allright"

Zechs nodded and the muscles on his back released their tension. ...Okay, that hat was _close._

As the group walked out, Scorpius leaned over Captain Braca's shoulder.

His ever loyal second in command's ears perked up: "Lock the ship down. These people are not who they appear to be. Draw back the repair team and for the love of all that you hold dear, _disable their guns_."

Scorpius swallowed in fear, something he rarely did. "They have a clear shot at our heart and they have but to squeeze!"

Braca quickly left for the gargantuan Carrier's bridge hall with an excuse of having to 'relay data'. Both sides knew it looked iffy but Zechs and Scorpie just smiled and nodded, like the diplomats they were.

In the next room, Jyggalag's apparition guided Darien & Rokusho to a secluded area of the ship where they could exchange information.

^_^ ^_^ -_- o_o ^_^ ^_^

Planet Sanghelios. Dust devils lapped at the feet of two Mobile Suits. One was blue and wielding a huge gun, tied with a power cable to its backpack. The other was red. It had six 'defensor discs', small forcefield generators, on its shoulders. ...And an energy blade hidden under its pauldron.

The blue suit was sealed shut, its massive cannon hung slack at the side. The gem set in its chest glimmered with power. The red suit's chest had been opened. Kane was standing on the opened cockpit door, staring up.

Up at the kneeling Iron Giant. On one of its shoulders stood Hogarth. On the other, the Doctor. Kane and the Doctor, through a little shouting, were looking for the edges of reason.

"Why are you here?" Kane shouted. The Doctor frowned. "You have Manhattan. You're using him for..." Bile rose in the Doctor's throat. "You're killing him!" Clenched fists and accusing gazes rained down on Kane.

"Yes, we're killing him." Kane sighed in exaspiration. "We are using him for our ends and he will be dead when we're done." The former N.O.D. commander decided it would be best to be frank with the Doctor. If they were to fight, the victor would be uncertain, but the Red Council's plans had been advanced too far to bach down now, even on threat of war. The Doctor was too smart to fall for deceptions at this point and honesty would make the Doctor sympathetic, angry, or _both._

Hogarth's fist clenched on the Giant's 'Iron' facsimilie of a collar bone. How could he be so... _callous_... Kane would throw away thousands of lives so that he and the Red Council could torture and _kill_ Manhattan. Just to obtain _stuff._

_(By the way, the Iron Giant was not in fact made of iron. For one thing, iron wasn't impervious to nukes and wasn't capable of tanking Dalek agony beams.)_

The Doctor sighed. "Is there anything we can work out, anything you could accept in return for his life? Nobody wants a war!" The blue mech shifted. Its gun jerked upward slightly.

Kane turned a baleful gaze toward his teammatein the blue Mobile Suit. "Don't", he mouthed.

He looked back up and shouted: "Doctor... At this point, even the heart of the TARDIS wouldn't be enough. Only three or four of Eldred's patron gods _combined_ would be an equal exchange."

Kane frowned at the Doctor and stamped his foot. "If we could do this without tormenting sentient beings, don't you think we would? We're selfish pricks but we're not idiots! We knew we might provoke something like this. We know we might lose and we will stand and fight if it comes down to it." He lowered his head and walked back toward his red Mobile Suit's control chair.

"Give up. Minimize the loss of life." And the door closed.

The Doctor nodded solemnly. "There's nothing for it then. We can't allow you to disembowel causality and obtain the kind of power Manhattan has. We'll have to fight you."

The Iron Giant had enough. He stood to his full height, ignited the thrusters in his legs and shot backward and upward in a long, arcing jump toward the Blue Council's staging area.

Ambassador Buta, champion of Pyro, had just walked through the energy gate his friend Eldred had set up when the gargantuan Giant crashed down on the red soil. The ambassador was knocked off his feet by the shockwave.

Once the dust had cleared, the other two emmisaries of the gods gated in.

First Shakti of Persephone, a lady who wore the form and armor of a humanoid stagbeetle, complete with horn. Master of healing magic, friend of the Ents.

She laid a hand on Toldor. Her voice was melodic and sweet as nectar: "Hello, cherished one. Your sprouts have missed you."

The old Ent chuckled. "Great-grandsprouts. And they will endure. They are mine after all. I am needed here. With... With the wizard in gray." Toldor's root-claw pointed toward the approaching wizard in the billowing gray coak.

Eldred's normally eternal frown was momentarily replaced with a smile as he turned to face his friends. "Shakti, what relief! We've formed a perimiter here, but war is sadly inevitable. I beg you..." His gaze turned toward the battlefield, where Tau troop ships buzzed around two retreating Mobile Suits.

Shakti placed a hand on Eldred's shoulder, which shocked him back to the present. "Not to worry. We brought an army and are willing to fight a losing battle."

Eldred nodded as he saw Lady Abraxus gate through, followed by her husband Lord Surtur and a gaggle of Silverbacks.

Silverbacks were massive icy falcon-apes. They could fly impossibly fast. This, combined with their ice breath, made them the proverbial Special Forces of Eldred's interplanar army.

Abraxus was no slouch either. Undefeated on the battlefield and always accompanied by her storm giant husband ever since Shakti reunited them...

Abraxus was impossibly quick and had a mastery of lightning only Eldred himself matched. Barely. She was also haughty and clever. Icy brilliance just like her elemental patron.

Buta dusted himself off with a heat blast. He was an obnoxious oaf, like his god. But like his god, he did come to value the right things. Especially with Eldred's influence.

Ideals of greed and ruthlesness had been replaced an appreciation for toil and passionate creativity. Buta had always been a powerhouse on the field of battle. Now, however, he didn't just apply his ample imagination to fantasize about the lady wizards. He used it to weave nets of fire and cause chain reactions that ended up forming spectacular displays of power.

Of course, the fact that he always traveled with an entourage of dozens of phoenixes, each capable of laserbeak attacks, didn't hurt his reputation for glorious devastation.

"Ahem." The Doctor had stepped off the Iron Giant and approached the four wizards, his own trenchcoat billowing in the wind alongside the wizards's capes.

Shrikes turned their gaze as they fluttered around Shakti and Eldred. The Doctor sighed: "We are now officially at war. ...And I can't help but feeling I'm stuck in a quotestorm"

Abraxus smiled misschievously. "Let us gather our forces, then."

On the other side of the camp, the G-man and Kaworu both leaned on the TARDIS. They refused to speak to each other but after Tabris came back, the G-man's body language, stilted as it may have been, expressed far more grief then menace. ...He wondered if the Doctor had given him a talking to.

The G-man's jaw hurt. And yet he opened it. With closed eyes, he sighed. "Tabris, I'm sorry." Nagisa rolled his eyes at his former boss. "For?"

"Compounding your tragedy." The G-man sighed. Tabris raised an eyebrow, the rest of his face still blank. The G-man was a great deal of things but he was not sentimental.

But the Doctor's rage... To be hated by a man who's had to suffer through a millennium of tragedy and came out mostly okay is as harsh a condemnation as anything. The G-man didn't like that. AT all.

Tabris knew firsthand how itfelt. And he also knew how it felt to be forgiven by someone like that.

The G-man, eyes still closed, sighed again, this time it was more a sigh of frustrated puzzlement then one of grief. "I do not regret that I hurt you. I am satisfied with the results. However... Unintended consequences... I do not understand, but... You..."

The G-man looked pensive. Tabris guessed he was grasping for words, hoping to find meaning that wasn't there.

Tabris smiled and placed a hand on the G-man's shoulder. "...I understand your perspective... I do... And thank you."

The G-man's pensive face scowled back into a frown. His voice was ominous, and _humming_ with the sound of time... "There is something I can do to make it up to you..."

Tabris looked mildly suprised and a bit hesitant. "Oookay..."

G-man's eyes opened, revealing the yellow, coruscating light of the TARDIS streaming down out of his eyes. They dripped down like tears, but they weren't. As evidenced by his slight wince as they burned through his not quite corporeal form.

"The TARDIS and I can help you take your time. You will have a chance to learn, make friends and... "

The G-man smiled misschievously. "Well..." Tabris saw a brief image of a girl with white hair, about 17, glittering in pink light which enveloped her naked body and converted it into a metal battleshell. Tabris's eyes went wide.

G-man put a hand on Tabris's shoulder and everything went white.

^_^ ^_^ -_- ^_^ ^_^ O_O

Braca had been running scans on the Daedalus for... for seven minutes now. He had found a thick crystal structure running through almost all of the ship's power conduits, like a skeleton or a nervous system...

Just like on the Command Carrier, every Scarran warboat and nearly every other type of ship in the sector. Nope, nothing odd there, just the computer system.

Also, he had found a fluctuation on the edge of the scan. He had a crewmember focus some cameras on it. Nothing weird. Though they _could_ be invisible.

Braca made his way down to the launch bay to test his theory but this was the moment Scorpius had chosen to exit the Daedalus. They met on the connecting gantry and the duo whispered in each-other's ears again.

They both nodded and Braca offered Scorpius his pistol. Zechs gulped.

Scorpius took Braca's gun and raised it up to eye level. His eyes flickered and he adjusted his aim... Scorpius had his sights on thin air.

Scorpius, beside being a brilliant mind, had also been given a rare gift by his genetics. He could sense thermal patterns. Now, this wasn't very useful around Zechs, 'cause most of his face was hidden by the helmet...

And on the single occasion he took it off, his face was... blank. Devoid of thermal signatures...

But on most people, like Darien Fawkes and John Creighton, he could detect lies and other anomalies.

...And a cloaking field, especially a small one, bleeds a lot of heat.

In this case, though, it wasn't the presence of heat that tipped of Scorpius. It was the absence.

Y'see, Ancient tech was _very_ sophisticated, and heat was dissipated internally. This did mean, though, that an object the size and rough shape of a van was _exactly the same temperature all across the hull_, a mere hundred yards from Scorpie's face. You tend to notice a van-sized homogenous area in a hangar bigger then a football stadium with convection to match.

The inevitable happened when Scorpius squeezed the trigger. The pistol belched a blob of plasmized oil. It zipped through the Command Carrier's gargantuan cargo bay.

The shot slapped into the invisible windshield of the Puddlejumper, which was hovering exactly where Scorpie had aimed. The cloak held, but for a brief instant, something green and cylindrical shimmered into view for all to see.

D'argo could only curse as he pushed the nimble little pod into evasive maneuvers. Moments ago he was distracted, talking with the Timeless one about weapons and warrior tradition. Oh how boredom can dull the senses. _Frell!_

"Oh crap." Zechs borrowed Darien's catchprhase as he depressed the side of his helmet. He shouted to Jyggalag: "Close the door, shields up, charge weapons, _RUN!_"

Within the Daedalus's computer system, Jyggalag complied.

The airlock door slammed shut just before a barrage of small-caliber energy pistol bolts, from Braca's sidearm, slammed into the door. Followed by a deluge of the same from Scorpius's personal guards. Scorpie retreated into the safety of the ship just before the Daedalus's turrets could reach the gangplank.

Railgun shots were loaded into their barrels, destined to accelerate and emerge a force with decent mass and extreme acceleration.

But the 'repair crew' that had not, in fact, repaired the hyperdrive, had placed breaching charges between each gun and its power line. As the shield went up, communication was cut between the charges and their transponders.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

"Engaging docking clamps." Peacekeeper mooks winced as four gargantuan metal arms bounced off the ship's forcefield.

Scorpius was already hard at work on a computer console next to them. He called upon the power of the Carrier's three _(!)_ Super Solenoid Modules, each capable of generating enough energy to power a floating seige god like Ramiel or the glittering city of Atlantis.

A shield similair to the Daedalus formed around it. It was powered by the Carrier's main shield reactors, deep within the beast. It had lost its external shielding, yes, but in return it was able to envelop the Daedalus in a bubble.

A bubble which pressed and grinded onto the Daedalus's shield.

The unmanned puddle jumper was crushed between both shield layers, slowly but surely turning into a thin layer of excited atoms.

Jyggalag was howling in pain, his mind, his _body_, had been gashed over a dozen times by the Peacekeeper breaching charges.

Zechs snarled as he patched all the power he could draw from the trans-reality-drive into the shields, along with the main drive.

Scorpius made sure the shields matched him, though only just, so that eventually, the Daedalus's power supply would run out.

That was enough for Scorpius. So he set the shields to a constant level of pressure, using only one of the three S2M's (Super Solenoid Modules) and saving the other two for a rainy day.

The pancaked, atomized remains of the unmanned, unshielded puddlejumper sizzled between shield layers.

Unmanned? Oh yes.

Because the Timeless one saw his chance when Scorpius & Braca ran back into the safety of the ship proper. He knew they had to move, now or never, or they'd all be dead.

So he enveloped everyone in a cloak of darkness and simply vanished, to reappear in a corridor somewhere aboard the ship. Somewhere near the power source. ...He didn't tell Moya's crew they were likely to end up appearing inside a wall or floor. They didn't need to know, especially now that they all teleported safely. No harm, no foul.

Meanwhile, Scorpius had retreated to his quarters. He had stepped into a secret room, where two glowing rings (of the jewelry kind) were waiting for him. One was red, one was green. Both were made of crystal glass. Each had been connected to one of the S2 modules.

Few people could wield the Green Lantern ring of Willpower. Few people could wield the Red Lantern ring of Rage.

A rare few could wield both rings and remain in control. Scorpius, however, was kinda special.

He'd pilfered both rings with his powergloved boss's help and hooked them into the ship's systems, to be used in case of emergency.

This would qualify.

After donning both rings, Scorpius crouched. He called the spirit to him from beyond. Beyond the world, beyond everything and anything he'd ever known. Within the Deep Roads of Thedas, Vengeance left its host to die to the Darkspawn hordes and rushed into Scorpius's body

But in another universe, one adjacent to Thedas, another protean spirit sensed the change. He, too, was fighting monsters deep underground. Destroyers in a Dwarven ruin. Nevertheless, the situation was similair enough to sense Vengeance as it passed him. Razah looked up at the sky in importent horror. This was bad.

He hoped that, whatever the hell was fighting in the next few universes over, wouldn't ever show up in _his_ home.

Razah immedeately realized, of course, that his hopes were futile and he was screwed.

On the Command Carrier, an angry Scorpius, crackling with white, red and green light, snarled.

Dozens of red and green energy constructs, made of hard light, stepped forward.

The red constructs were Scarran soldiers, armed only with their claws, teeth and the thermal blasts they could fire from their mouths or the palms of their hands.

The green constructs were Peacekeepers, armed with energy rifles.

Scorpius himself surrounded himself in a bubble of light and phased through a bulkhead, hard-light stooges not far behind.

Back in the corridors near the Carrier's power core, Creighton coughed up sooty smoke left behind by the teleport spell. "Thanks, man, but... _never_ do that again"

The Timeless one smiled at Creighton. His friends were still recovering from the sudden magical translocation, so Creighton thought aloud. "Okay, plan A failed." He clapped his hands and turned to his friends. "Time for plan B!"

...Blank expressions, even from the old mage. Aeryn managed to raise one eyebrow. Only slightly. Finally, D'argo spoke up. "Plan B?"  
Chiana looked utterly confused. "Did we make a plan B?"  
Aeryn shrugged. "Apparently, Creighton has a plan B."  
Arms crossed, D'argo sighed: "Okay, what's plan B?"

Silence reigned. For a moment there, Creighton thought he heard a crackle behind him. Everyone, even the Timeless One, was suddenly staring at some place behind Creighton.

Kaworu Nagisa stepped into view from behind a pillar, chuckling lightly at the dumbfounded strangers: "Plan B: We find the power cores, pull them out and _get the hell out of dodge_."

^_^ ^_^ -_- ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

Sylvanas Windrunner was the fifth member of the Red Council. She'd supplied the help of the Burning Legion demons and her marksmanship was applied well inside the Vaeyate mobile suit.

Or as they'd called the rebuild: The Rosa, named after Don Rosa, co-author of a universe which had an anti-inertia gun and an anti-friction gun.

The Rosa now posessed an anti-friction cannon on its chest. Its purposes were varied, but a bullet without any inertia could not make a dent into a stick of butter.

The red suit was now called the Barks, and it posessed the anti-inertia gun.

As the Doctor preached peace to a scout platoon of Tau on top of the Iron Giant in a last ditch effort to minimize the bloodshed, Sylvanas took aim...

The Tau wouldn't listen to the Doctor, Sylvanas reassured herself. The guy with the glove, her master, had taken the Tau's Ethereal generals and tied them into the base's computer systems. Apparently, that's how her master kept the Tau in check.

At any rate, few things could take down the last Iron Giant in open combat. One of those few things was the paradoxed and rebuilt Vayeate Mobile Suit's buster rifle. Sylvanas bared a toothy grin and pulled the trigger.

The glint from the yellow bolt of light had been noticed. Shakti and Buta's voice screamed in unison. "DUCK!" But it was slightly too late.

The entire Blue Council camp had ducked into a huddle. A tactical disadvantage, yes, but the enemy was not in range yet. Except Sylvanas, of course.

The Giant screamed in agony. Its eyes flashed red with rage and it unleashed an eye beam onto Sanghelios's sand, glassing a small puddle of it.

The damaged Giant sighed deeply, attempting to regain self-control in spite of the provocation. Control, however, isn't the same as calm and though the Giant suppressed his berserker self-defense program, he was still justifiably angry. So was everybody else.

Diagnostic: A few plates had been blown off his back. Including a shoulderblade. Hogarth and the Doctor were clinging on for dear life. A hole had been blown through his chest, but it had only scratched the important stuff.

Secondary systems activated and the parts that had fallen onto the ground skidded back up the Giant's leg, to reatach themselves. At around the same time, the Giant went into battle mode.

His left arm opened and his hand flipped into his forearm, being exchanged for a claw which could charge and fire small rifts in reality.

His right hand retracted into his forearm, out of said forearm emerged a gargantuan sniper cannon, with an SMG-like spreader disc on top. Both used the same ammo: The Giant's blood, the Giant's power fluid.

Finally, the Doctor was shocked for a moment, as the Giant's shoulders spread out to place a plexiglass dome over his head, like an astronaut's helmet.

On the Giant's chest, a larger version of his left-arm rift cannon activated and three serpentine tentacles extended from his back, each carrying a wide-spread laser.

The Doctor and Hogarth frowned in disappointment. No more options. The Giant frowned as well. Though his eyes were white and his mind was clear...

It was sadly time for him to _do what he did best_...

Target – Locked.

Boom. A sphere of light swallowed a gunship, before shrinking it into nothing.

Target – Locked.

Boom. A very large sphere of light swallowed a platoon, but not the ground they were standing on. The Giant crouched and his shield dome polarized, turning opaque...

The Doctor and Hogarth could only feel the shockwave as it blew back the Giant. Outside, it had blown back every Tau (and every monster) on the battlefield.

The Giant had staggered backward. When his protective dome depolarized, he looked around. A few of the Tau troops closest to the explosion had been crushed by the energy ball's shockwave, but most could still shoot their guns...

Still a threat.

On a nearby mountaintop, Sylvanas aimed another shot at the giant, but a bolt of life energy nailed her suit in the side right as she pulled the trigger. From the other side of the battlefield, Shakti smiled as her guided Wrath bolt had struck true.

The beam Sylvanas had fired from the knockoff Buster Rifle flew over the Giant's head and blew through a hillside. The indifferent hillside compensated by sagging a little in the middle.

Sylvanas snarled at her partner in the mech next to her. "I can't shoot straight without you covering me!" Kane replied in annoyance: "Spreading defense discs! I suggest you shoot the portal. Cut off their reinforcements."

Targets – Locked.

A storm of little green energy bolts from the Giant's SMG disc rained down on Tau battlesuits.

Problem was, the Tau army was big and had a lot of air support. Each of their battlesuits had a shield reactor. The Giant could only manage to disrupt their firing formations as the Blue Council's line was pushed back.

On Sylvanas's sniper hill, a bombardment of flung stones (courtesy of Eldred) and an ethereal _cow_ (Also Eldred, his earth god has a sense of humour...) impacted Kane's Defensor shield.

The shield was powered by a 2PM, just like its offensive counterpart currently taking aim at the portal. The portal which was STILL sending in backup.

A firestorm glanced off the Defensors and Kane was about to boast about the 'invincibility of his shield' when he felt the ground tremble.

"RUN!" He shouted at Sylvanas, before diving clean off the hill, taking two Defensor discs with him guard him from potshots on the descent and firing his spaceflight thrusters at full power to stabilize his fall.

The thrusters weren't originally meant for atmosphere, but as long has he had an S2M to pump power into them, _the thrusters could do atmosphere_.

Sylvanas, instead of following Kane's lead, took the shot.

Charged energy lanced out from the blue Rosa's Buster Rifle, slamming into the coral archway that held up the portal. She sweeped the beam across, cutting the arch's top off its support pillars. The sound of shattering stone did not make anyone in earshot happy.

However, Sylvanas had ignored the ground under her feet shaking and bubbling up.

Entering the battlefield from the air to try and stop Buta, Marduk roared at the top of his lungs into the "communicator" on his neck.

"That's a VOLCANO spell. RUN!"

But it was too late. Pinned down and distracted by the bombardment of fire and stone, Sylvanas did not notice (and could not evade) the volcano's maw opening beneath her feet.

A column of magma twice as wide and a hundred times as high as her mech blasted up from the center of Sanghelios. It had been caused by, who else, Buta and his patron god of fire.

When Buta gestured upward, a torrent of lava powerful enough to lift a starship into the upper atmosphere erupted at Sylvanas's location.

Her body was instantly immolated by the heat around her. The Rosa's outer armor and systems had been liquefied. Even the composite armor of a mobile suit can only withstand so much heat.

The geyser of lava was powerful enough to punch a hole through the shield the Red Council had erected over Sanghelios. The Rosa did, in fact, end up in orbit. Only a few thousand miles away from the _Revelation_ warfleet, who were currently waiting their turn to take their home planet back.

The only thing that kept the mech from being completely destroyed was the crystal at the Rosa's core. Sylvanas had set its fire to "Area of effect, maximum power."

Removal of friction.

The magma had flowed _around _her, rather then through her. The Rosa, though mangled, could one day be repaired. Its network crystals, including the inertia beam, had been cracked and the metal warped, but a _lot_ of work could fix it.

The heat, however, had destroyed the Banshee Queen's body in a blaze of white fire.

Her spectral soul, which could survive pretty much anything, fell down into the atmosphere. She saw the same thing the guys in the spaceships were seeing.

(And she was VERY annoyed she didn't have a communicator on her ghost-body and so couldn't tell her team that there were _guys in spaceships_ waiting outside the energy shield)

She fell through the energy shield like it was nothing. ...Would've been quite a thing, to crack her nonexistent nose on the shield and be stuck observing in the upper atmosphere. Thankfully, ghosts can ignore energy shields. (!)

At any rate, the real war had begun.

Thousands of Railgun bolts flew across the deserts of Sanghelios like horizontal rain. They impacted shimmering green energy shields, which tanked the first few blows, but could not stop dozens of well-aimed rounds from turning what were basically unarmed animals into swiss cheese.

Unarmed animals wielding _magic._ The very front line of Eldred's army consisted of Rhinoks, gigantic tripod-creatures, usually slouched downward and passive. These beasts, however, were going berserk at the moment.

Each had a halo of stones over their heads _(from which a stone occasionally detached and struck a troop carrier or jetpacker)._ They blasted forth earthqakes and waves of spikes whenever they took a step.

Tau preferred to fight at range. Eldred knew this. However, _something_ had charged the Blue Council forces.

Something Sylvanas had conjured up before her mech got a volcanic enema.

The Burning Legion had entered the fray. Hundreds of felhounds, felguards and doomguards to serve as a wall of meat to protect the relatively fragile Tau battle suits.

They were quickly skewered by waves of spikes. Followed by a bombardment of fire, which they were immune to, and... gargantuan ice crystals.

"ARRIBA!" The Flurry luitenant shouted. "We're going, we're going!" his mount replied as it slouched forward.

Grunting, the Flurry _(symbiosis between a snowman and a two-legged mount)_ expelled a bright white crystal snowflake the size of a tall human...

And flung it from its tail into the battleground. Followed by dozens of other crystals of the same size and shape. Well, rougly.

Upon contact with the ground, each ice crystal imploded, sucking dozens of Felhounds, Felguards and summoned Infernals into nice, big piles.

These were examples of Abraxas's artillery.

Her hands crackled with lightning as she dashed at near mach 1 through the enemy forces. When she was at point blank range she unleashed a frost orb, which flash-froze the enemy.

Followed by Chain Lightning, wielded like a whip.

Ice fractured, demonic ichor exploded out the cracks.

A Tau Railgun round impacted Abraxus's personal shield, which was made of hypersonic winds. It simply bounced off, albeit at dangerous speeds, to hit some hapless minion or other.

She smirked at the challenger, a Tau with a VERY big railgun and special decals on his crisis suit. Problably a sniper and/or leader guy.

A felhound jumped up to bite her, but her husband Surtur smashed it into a fine paste. Surtur gazed up, into the sky. His body was struck by lightning from the blue, which he bended into the area around his wife.

She hissed at the Tau leader guy. "Come, find destiny's embrace." She flung her arms outward and bubbles of magic ice floated off her form...

Spinning...

Spinning...

The wind picked up for the Tau 4th Impromptu Division. Luitenant Vel'O'Nai wondered alould: "What in the Warp is goi...WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAA..." He screamed into the open channel for the entire Tau army to hear. He and the troops under his command were swept up into a tornado.

A tornado which soon developed a mystical thunderstorm around the funnel.

Needless to say, everything sucked in was dead and burnt long before it got reaquainted with the ground.

Such is the power of Wizards.

Another luitenant's voice crackled through battlefield comms: "All Tau, steady retreat. Repeat: _Steady retreat!_" Ever since the Ethereals had recused themselves, the Tau troops weren't quite as calm as they used to be.

And so the Tau army slowly walked backward, firing its guns as it went. This left its Legion allies to be slaughtered by Silverbacks, Dragons, invisible Sylph squads, living hammers and saws and the occasional Ent _(providing forcefield support)_.

Of course, the Burning Legion only pledged a small contingent, enough to conquer a nation. The Red Council was taking on the combined forces of what used to be a planet with only a few thousand Tau and cowardly demons for an army.

In the air, things weren't going much better. Phoenix energy beams lanced into Tau hulls. The Phoenixes's light blasts weren't completely overpowering the shields, but after two or three shots in the same spot, _(which was _always _the side of the hull, right next to the engine, damn those bastards could aim...)_ ...boom.

And then there was the Iron Giant. It wasn't firing its main cannon (problably because of friendly fire) but the Kane and Marduk could only shake their heads in annoyed disgust while it steadily broke the middle of their battle line.

Energy beams danced through the sky, cutting wings off fighters.  
The Giant's eyes burned an unending snaking path of smouldering glass up the the enemy lines, as if it were a windscreen wiper and the Tau were suicidal bugs.

Which, now that you mention it...

At any rate, the Giant's arms each kept a flank at bay. From time to time it would blast itself skyward with the thrusters on its back and feet, not for a moment faltering in its unending torrent of green light.

Then it would come down in the Tau tank line, crush a hovertank under each foot, and slowly walk back to the front line, scything through enemies as he went.

Eldred stood on a hillside overlooking the battle. Among other things, he was casting Dragonfires which would fly up and crawl into enemy planes to bake the crew.

He was also directing the troops of the Earth and Death gods, who didn't send their own champions. Eldred contemplated the Iron Giant inbetween the guiding of Soul Rifts and Vinewalls into the enemy forces.

It was big, strong. And protected by Toldor's forcefield. ...One could only hope he would last long enough...

And then the gargantuan interlocking spinny rings at the Red Council base started spinning.

Magic was in the air.

_ _ -_- ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

Kaworu Nagisa had been translocated a fourth time, hurtling through time and space, onto the peacekeeper Command Carrier he'd visited once before, when he was still in the Red Council's service.

He stepped into view from behind a pillar, chuckling lightly at the dumbfounded strangers to answer their question: "Plan B: We find the power cores, pull them out and _get the hell out of dodge_."

Kaworu Nagisa was someone Moya's crew had never seen before, of course.

But the Timeless one had. He smiled at Nagisa. The boy had grown a little older since they'd met a day or so ago. And he smelled like Time Vortex. 'We seem to have a temporal refugee on our hands...' he thought. 'Trust as far as you can throw, of course, but he _did_ come to _us_ and _not _to Scorpie...'

Kaworu raised an eyebrow at the Timeless One's staring. The kid looked ragged. Desert dust in his hair, orange _Gi_ (Martial arts clothes) coated in red, orange and purple blood.

Creighton was about to comment, when he froze. An expression of dawning comprehension and horror flashed across his face.

_Waaait a sec._

The exact same expression Darien wore every other day in the last week.

_Orange. Gi._

Gears in Creighton's head started whirring. The conclusion he came to had him giggling like a loon for five minutes straight, unable to explain to his alien friends just what wearing those close and firing energy bolts like that _meant_.

After a moment's pause, he breathed in.

"Okay. Fine by me." 'No chance of any sanity today' thought Creighton. At least he had a martial arts god on his side now.

Creighton pinched the bridge of his nose in exaspiration. "Sure, er, lead on."

In the Command Carrier's internal spaceport, The Daedalus was still straining against the forcefield that had imprisoned it. Though Zechs, Darien and Rokusho had managed to bring the ship's guns back to full strength, there was still not much they could do. They were deadlocked and could be crushed at Scorpius's leisure. Still, Zechs mused, Scorpie wouldn't. He'd rather have a look at the reality drive then simply crush it.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Jyggalag had managed to hack a small Prowler vessel outside the shield. The data on it was keeping him quite busy. Especially the technical specs.

In his chambers,Scorpius frowned at his hard-light interface. He'd seen the invaders approaching the power core, and he'd called in a favour. Though the Red Council was currently at war, they could thankfully spare one experimental weapon.

Even so...

Scorpius's gaze fell onto the Timeless one. He felt his throat get dry. "This could get difficult..." Undeterred, his mind embraced Vengeance and he phased through his ship's floor. He picked up speed as he went. In a flash, he flew across Creighton's face. ...Scorpius couldn't help but stick out his tongue. He grabbed the Timeless one by the wrist and yanked him through the bulkhead on the other side. Let's get to the garden and fight.

If Creighton had realized what Scorpius had done, he didn't show it.  
Instead he unholstered his pulsepistol Winona and fired, shooting a luminescent green Peacekeeper soldier in the hard-light head as it dropped down through the cieling.

It shattered into a million pieces. Aeryn pulled out both her pistols and did the same to another hard-light soldier stepping through the wall.

D'argo threw his Qualta blade to Chiana. In a single motion, she decapitated a Red Light Scarran, switched the Qualta Blade to Blaster mode and threw it back to D'argo.

Several more Red and Green constructs flew into their hallway. Creighton sighed loudly. "I hoped I'd never have to say this, but they're coming out of the walls!"

Of all people, only Nagisa chuckled at the joke. He then shot a cross-shaped energy beam out of his palm which cut straight through a Scarran and a Peacekeeper construct.

He gave a sidelong glance to Creighton. "Making it that small isn't actually easy." He stepped back. Yellow lightning running across his arms signified he was powering. "Cover me. I'll play artillery."

The Moya crew granted the request by immedeately opening fire on the remaining Hard Light stooges.

Kaworu twirled around like a ballerina and flung dozens of (conventional) energy bolts at them, completely demolishing the hallway ahead and anyone in it while his body was wrapped in an aura of yellow fire. His hair was still white, though...

"There is.. something called overkill." D'argo cut in. As usual, Chiana just smiled.

Inside the Command Carrier, there was a garden. It was located above of the ship's internal spaceport, the central location of the ship, like Central Park.

The park represented the lungs of the ship and the crew's anchor to normalcy.

Scorpius was showing the Timeless One around by throwing him into the scenery.

Though the Timeless one had thrown fire, darkness and ice at Scorpius's energy shield, he just kept coming.

A blast of red energy blew the Timeless One's leg off. He sighed wearily. Though he threw up a self-repairing earthen barrier to bar Scorpie's way, his heart wasn't in it.

Of course, Scorpius noticed. He hovered around the makeshift hovel. "You can't defeat me." The Timeless one smirked evilly inside his hovel. "No..." he said wearily. "I can't." He dispelled his defenses and stood facing Scorpius in only his robes.

"Even if your friends, who are so skillfully taking out my hard-light soldiers at this time make it to the core and power down my rings..." Scorpius held up his clenched fists to illustrate his point. "Vengeance still empowers this..." Scorpius drummed his fingers on a white crystal set into his chestpiece.

_(Lantean technology, like the invisible shuttle that got crushed earlier. Total protection, but requires an energy source. Like Vengeance, if you're skilled enough to turn spirit energy into conventional energy)_

Internally, the Timeless one smirked. He sat down on the pile of dirt that was his last-ditch fortification. He looked warmly... defeated, but warmly, at Scorpius, who smiled back mysteriously. "Let me tell you my story..."

On their way to the core, the Moya crew and Kaworu mowed down several more squads of (conventional) security personnel (With the Moya crew's shooting actually getting to kill one or two Peacekeepers before Tabris could obliterate them).

They were nearing their objective, only had to turn a few more corners.

Tabris stopped in his tracks and turned toward a wall. He grinned at Chiana, then Creighton. "Watch this..." He placed both hands on the metal.

It creaked. The edges of the plate bent. Rivets popped. Welds ripped. The metal plate was launched into the door at the other side of the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen, first floor..." Nagisa deadpanned. Creighton finished the joke as he stepped toward the Dragonball warrior... "Lingerie, heavy assault weapons... Power cores!"

Nagisa yanked the one core that was still tied into the main power grid out of its locking mechanism. It was a small, red stained glass tube. About twice the length and width of a can of beans. There was no flicker of lights. Seamlessly, the ship, along with the forcefield imprisoning the Daedalus, along with the entire ship, switched to conventional power.

Creighton frowned. He placed his hand on the power core Tabris had just pulled from its socket. The Super Solenoid Module looked like it was hewn out of a ruby. It was a bit warm to the touch, hummed like an electrical transformer and glowed very, very red.

That's what you get when you take the mechanism that makes an Angel tick. _The heartbeat of a biological entity..._ And link it into the best mechanical power container out there.

_Atrocity in a jar._

The Timeless one told Scorpius his origins. One time, many, _many_ lifetimes ago, he was a man obsessed with power, no matter the cost, no matter the price. He had a curse put on him: When he died, someone else would die in his stead, and he would return to life an amnesiac.

The scars, which glowed purple when he employed his most primal powers, bound this curse. He wandered his local multiverse for a _long_ time before he found his way. After one particulair death, he met friends. He learned their stories, helped them out. They saved him in return. ...In the end, he wandered off for redemption.

"And did you find it?" Scorpius said, genuinely curious at what the hell his subjugated foe was doing.

The Timeless one's eyes glowed purple. He was looking Scorpius over...  
Just a little more time...

"Yes I did..." The world-weary immortal continued. In the time after his redemption, he sought out every single soul he wronged, directly or indirectly, and offered them a chance: Their souls could inhabit his body.

The Timeless one would shapeshift his body into whatever form they wanted. They could live for as long as they wanted, within reason, using their powers for whatever they wanted, within reason. It took a long ritual, but if they wanted they could even through time to return to their old lives a short while after their supposed 'deaths.'

Everyone accepted to some degree or other.

When each soul was ready to move on, he asked them for forgiveness.

"Everyone accepted?"

"Everyone."

"Very well." Scorpius nodded. "I'll throw you into deep space for a while. Don't worry, I'll come pick you up when my little friend is done with Nagisa."

The Timeless one did not expect _that_ one. "Wh... who?" Scorpius smirked.

Aeryn and Nagisa nodded at each-other as they pulled the other two S2Ms out of cradles made out of a single piece of red/green crystal.

The lights on Scorpius's rings went out. He sighed in annoyance. "Why is that Terminator taking so long?" The Timeless one stood up, glowing purple through all his scars. His eyes glowed as well.

"That crystal." he pointed. It's powered by a very powerful spirit. And only spirits can harm spirits.

Scorpius, floating white with all of Vengeance's power, shivered in fear. He could only gasp in sudden horror as he read the victorious glee on the Timeless One's old features. "What... What are you up to?"

The Timeless One crossed his arms and smirked smugly at Scorpius. His scars were smoking, burning into his flesh. "_Spirits_. All those people who forgave me so long ago... They decided to stick around until I would go with them to the afterlife... They're all around me right now. Staring at you. See for yourself."

Realization flashed across Scorpius's features. His eyes glowed white as they were empowered by Vengeance to see. All around the Timeless one, hundreds of people were in various states of 'angry mob.' "No, no no no no no!" Scorpius screamed in panic. He didn't realize he was flight-capable, but instinct took over and he darted for the nearest exit at top speed.

A chuckle on the part of the Timeless One. Spacetime warped as the sigils carved into his body transposed themselves onto the dirt, grass and the air one last time.

"Spirits can go through shields. Goodbye, folks. _Soulstorm!_" The Timeless One's body exploded into purple mist. The curse was lifted and the purple mist changed into simple ashes.

Smiling brightly at the middle of a whirlwind of hands and legs and roaring faces, the Timeless One led the charge into the ship's corridors.

A moment later, a fleeing Scorpius felt only a light tug, followed by a snap. Vengeance was gone. Scorpie was flying through his ship's corridors at the time. He faceplanted into a wall. Nose broken, but not dead.

At around the same time, Nagisa and Moya's crew inspected the three Super Solenoid Modules.

Only one person knew what they were. And that one person was getting a little angry.

Nagisa's yellow aura ignited. He scowled, fell onto his knees and hid his eyes under his hair.

Chiana kneeled beside him. She hugged him. Creighton's voice in the background. "What's wrong?"

Nagisa coughed loudly, trying to find the words. "These crystals. These... _things_. I have one in my chest. It's what carries my soul when, y'know, my head gets blown off." A wry chuckle, followed by a small earthquake as his fist slammed into the metal ground. It dented.

"They're _not_ power cores. They're minds! And these things are my lobotomized siblings..." He clenched his fist around the module's output manifold. He could feel the power. His expression was far from a smile.  
"Their minds are completely empty. This is a mockery of what we are."

Kaworu swallowed. "More importantly, interfacing technology with my kind's biology is a very dangerous proposal. It got my homeworld destroyed and its population turned into a giant liquid blob."

Creighton nodded in understanding. "I know what you're going through."  
Kaworu's head turned. He stared at Creighton, seething.

Creighton frowned and slapped Kaworu.

"I _do_. Shut up. Now is _not_ the time to explain."

A shocked Kaworu nodded silently. Creighton smiled. "Attaboy. You _can_ stop them. You can stop whomever Scorpie is working is from screwing around with your species and their biology. Heck, you have your friends to help you."

"Soulstorm!"

The Timeless One's voice rolled across the hallway, followed by a purple shockwave.

Nagisa stood up and walked out of the reactor chamber, balling his fists and flaring up his aura. "And now I have one less friend."

The Moya crew followed him. Then something turned the corner. It looked like a blond Human or Peacekeeper woman. Only it had a gold ring on its finger... with a wreath of fire coming out.

"What in the the hezmana is THAT?" D'argo roared. The corridor's straight lines warped as the T-X shot a fireball at them.

Tabris extended his AT-field. Hexagons of orange light fell into place around the group. The fireball impacted but flowed around them.

In a flash, Tabris and the T-X charged eachother, grabbed eachother's wrists and phased eachother through the floor.

All the Moya quartet could do was wonder what the frell was up with bad guys jumping through walls and making off with their heavy hitters when a pokéball phased up through the floor, obviously thrown by Tabris. Creighton recognized it, but didn't have time to question this new insanity because it opened.

Deoxys emerged from its pokéball like it wasn't anything special _(which, even to Nebari and Luxans, it most certainly_ was_). _It rolled its eyes at the gawking meat and teleported the four Moya crewmembers, the three energy crystals _(Which was _not _easy)_, its pokéball and finally itself away to the Daedalus.

Tabris was fighting something that could beat him down in one blow with sheer physical force. It was a skeletal metal frame coated in shifting silver. Tabris noted it looked exactly like quicksilver, Darien's invisibility goop.

And then the T-X slammed a fist into the crystal core embedded in Tabris's chest. Crack. He phased through a few bulkheads.

Ouch. He felt as if his entire body was being flayed. Something those of us with an experience of pain stimuli would describe as "sore muscles".

Yeah... It's all relative. Especially for entities like Tabris who only experience pain when it gets _really_ bad.

Thankfully, Tabris knew Moya's crew had been teleported away by Deoxys so he could cut loose and blow some stuff up.

Tabris's AT-field extended into a sphere around his body and he chuckled. "Let's see if those martial arts lessons paid off." The AT-field glowed Super Saiyan yellow.

The T-X could only jerk its head sideways as power ratings quintupled. In response, the ring that was burning on its finger immolated the android's arm and part of its torso.

The T-X's eyes blasted a lance of crimson fire at Tabris. In response, he shot from his arm a full-power Cross blast.

_(As in, Christian cross-shaped. An Angel's signature attack next to the AT-field. Exhausting as all hell, but all the oomph of a kamehameha without the spin-up time.)_

The gout of holy light extended way beyond the size of Tabris's body. The two energy blasts collided, light and fire mingled... The combination of holy and unholy energies turned on itself and exploded. The corridor they were in was completely shattered, blowing out the floor and revealing the void of space underneath. Air flowed out. 'Thank ADAM I can breathe in space.' Kaworu thought.

The corridor-gutting explosion flung the T-X flung backward into a bulkhead. It managed to turn itself and literally land on its feet.

Tabris slammed back-first into a bulkhead on the other side of the corridor.

'This... could be a problem...' He mused to himself. He jumped/flew/floated down into the gap, onto the ship's hull. He had a reason for this, but it wasn't any worry about collateral damage.

The T-X jumped after him out into the void of space.

Moya's crew flashed briefly into existence on the Daedalus's bridge to drop off the S2Ms, before Deoxys immedeately teleported them on to Moya's bridge.

Zechs witnessed the spectacle from his chair and immedeately opened communications. "Everyone to the bridge."

Jyggalag instantly appeared beside him. "Shall I activate the subspace pulse to signal Talyn and Moya?" Zechs nodded absentmindedly, staring at the three crystal pylons that had been dropped on the ground. "Yes. We need a distraction."

When Darien dashed into the bridge, Zechs shoved a S2M into his hands and silently walked toward the Daedalus's power room.

On Moya: after a few minutes of enraged shouting and attempts to grab onto Deoxys (which he evaded) Moya's crustacean Pilot had had enough. He patched himself through to Crais and everyone on Moya. "Everyone, brace for Starburst. Talyn, Crais, I suggest you prepare..."

He sighed in annoyed acceptance. "For Battle." And the two Leviathans Starbursted toward the Command Carrier.

In the meantime, Tabris was floating out in space. Thankfully, this was something had done a few years ago back home. At least this time he had pants on. He propelled himself away from the Command Carrier to attack the T-X from above...

Until a Frak round _(Explosive round, think Flak but railgun filled with napalm the size of a bus.)_ clipped his AT-field. He quickly redirected thrust back down, away from the Frak cannon's firing line.

A quick scan confirmed his fears. He was stuck in an arena roughly the size of a football stadium. If he tried to fly out to space he'd be shot by the ship's guns.

Even a demigod usually can't tank sustained fire from starships.

Kaworu's mind (the smart part of his mind, the human part) was bombarded by the most _beautiful_ voice.

"One Ring to rule them all,  
One Ring to find them."

The whisper burned at his soul. His crystal was literally sizzling. He rolled his eyes into the back of his head, against his better judgement. He wanted nothing more but to listen, but the Angel part of him... he trusted it beyond himself... And his Angel half was in _pain_.

"One ring to bring them all  
and in the darkness bind them."

The T-X's eyes were burning like fire, pupils like a cat's gazing through space into Tabris's eyes.

Tabris chuckled. He thanked Kane and Scorpie, bastards that they were, for what they taught him about his place in the multiverse. About Tolkien and the Bible. Tabris smiled at the Fallen Maiar. "We are the same, you and I."

Sauron and Tabris encircled each-other, each emitting great fire. Bright yellow and hellish crimson.

"Are we now?" Sauron enveloped them both in its corrupted brilliance.

Tabris nodded. "Yeah. From a narrative perspectives, we're both based on Biblical entities."

The T-X's face twitched, as if it was trying to resist Sauron's influence. But Sauron spoke. "Marduk and Kane informed this... Terminator that is my vessel as well, traitor to their cause..."

Tabris smiled back at Sauron. "Same tutors as me."  
He gestured toward Sauron. "You were once a Maiar."

Sauron chuckled at Tabris. "The Bible calls them Angels. You know this..."  
Tabris shook his head. "And you turned on your almighty. Followed Morgoth. Satan."

In turn, Sauron chuckled. "Indeed. And while my bretheren are stuck sheperding the mortal cattle I am free to burn down and build whatever I like!"  
Red fire embraced Tabris. He pulled back his AT-field to let the ruse succeed.

"Little Angel. You fell as well. You are your father ADAM reborn. ADAM was a mindless tyrant. An idiot god. Your rebellion was justified. Are you his Jesus? Or are you _me_?"

Tabris's mind flashed to Shara crying in the desert. ..._All that matters_.

A slow chuckle rolled off Tabris's tongue. "You just called mortals weak and now you're complimenting my defiance? _Nah. _You're not how I'll save her."

Nagisa's AT-field extended back out from his brain, heart and crystal. Bright yellow light once again intermingled with crimson hellfire.

He grinned at the perplexed Sauron, shoved its gynoid body away with his arms and threw up the strongest AT-field he could muster.

A bus-sized blob of white and red light slammed into Sauron, throwing Tabris and his little protective bubble aside.

During the blast, Sauron's eyes flashed red and the T-X's mind came back online. "Reasserting control. Danger: Artefa-" *BOOM* Another gigantic plasma bolt. And another.

A gatling stream of plasma bolts slammed into the T-X from above. Talyn's main gun was firing full auto. Moya, its mother, was bobbing up and down, weaving side to side.

The Frak rounds the Command Carrier was firing never hit her. A few aimed for her, but Pilot and Moya were as one. They danced and bent to give Talyn and Crais a chance to charge in.

Talyn was indeed shooting the bad guys, like it was born to do. Its main cannon pelted the T-X with plasma bolt after plasma bolt, slowly wearing down its Sauron-powered defenses.

Captain Braca ordered all guns to fire on Talyn.

Neither Talyn nor Crais cared. They deftly weaved through the barrage. A flew close calls splashed against Talyn's shields. The war Leviathan simply bullrushed the Terminator at full power.

Even a demigod usually can't tank sustained fire from starships.

After a few seconds of saturation fire, the T-X flashed its eyes red and teleported a few thousand miles, into the space near the wormhole the Command Carrier was keeping open. Time to retreat.

Tabris bolted toward the wormhole as well, while Talyn started disarming the Command Carrier, one gun at a time.

It helped that the Carrier had lost use of external shields in favour of keeping the Daedalus imprisoned.

Braca roared in frustration, before composing himself.

Enemy warship inside, enemy warship outside, tactical advantage _stolen by a strike team... _And reports of not one but two superhuman duels. One outside, one in the garden.

It was at this moment that a crippled Scorpius staggered into the bridge.

"Um... Sir?" Braca said worriedly. Scorpius nodded at his second-in-command. "Broken nose, otherwise fine. Now..."

He turned toward the bridge crew. "Shut off the wormhole antenna. Divert all power to shields." He slammed his fist down on Braca's console and snarled like a Scarran: "Crush the Daedalus. Then redirect shields outwards."

The bridge crew immedeately went to work.

Sadly...

"Sir, Daedalus is resisting." a female luitenant reports to the bridge.

Scorpius quickly logs into Braca's console.

In the Daedalus, three S2M's had only just come online.

Scorpius's muscles relaxed. He sighed. "We're defeated. Everyone to the escape pods. RUN, NOW!"

The crew complied.

On board the Daedalus, Zechs is sitting in the captain's seat, looking down on Darien and Jyggalag('s hologram) sitting in their stations. "Take us out, Prince of Order." Jyggalag nods, tapping a few keys on his console.

Darien can't help but burst into absurdist laughter, which quickly died down when he heard the ship creaking loudly. ...Oh right, ship wasn't built to handle that kind of power.

"Redirecting energy to structural integrity fields..." 'Ah yes', Darien thought. 'How very Voyager. Still, if it works'...

And it did.

With a tremendous rumble, the shield generators built into the spaceport's walls explode one by one. Lightning danced over the busted emitters, scorching the Daedalus's shields... Darien gasped in amazement. One thing to see this on TV, but this...

"Shields?" Zechs asked Darien to shock him out of staring at the spectacle.  
Darien shakes his head awake. "Ehm, 99,999... 100%, Cap'n."  
Under his mask, Zechs raised an eyebrow at Darien. "Note to self, don't involve Darien in any more naval battles." he mumbled just loud enough for Darien to hear.

The Daedalus slowly lists toward the entrance of the spaceport, which is, obviously, sealed.

On the Command Carrier's bridge, everyone but Scorpius and Braca have ran to the escape pods. "Five more minutes." Scorpius whispers. Five more minutes 'til he can run to his quarters, hop in his personal escape pod with Braca and salvage what he can to start back up again.

Unexpectedly, a rift opens a few feet away. Out steps a heavily charred Marduk, who immedeately falls to his knees.

"Scorpius, our master..." The demon of destruction's skull-like face looks at Scorpius in abject dispair. Scorpius nods solemnly. "He's going to lose."

Marduk shakes his head, obviously still in a panic. "No, you idiot, he's going to..."

KUNG-TISSH.

The Daedalus's souped-up teleporter simply teleported the door's hinges out of their sockets. Its sublight engines flared and the starship bashed through the door at full speed. The shield simply shimmered a little as it knocked the gargantuan door out of its frame and drifting into space.

The Command Carrier's external shields felt the bite of the Daedalus's plasma beams and railguns, all firing at full power. An explosion rocke the Command Carrier.

Braca sighed at Scorpius and... ...whatever the demon's name is. "...And that was the external shield coil."

Marduk noticed the minion's irritation and chuckled. Any levity is welcome. "Come with me, both of you."

Scorpius shook his head in annoyance, inspecting diagrams on his console. "Two more minutes. They're not shooting the escape pods. Give me two more minutes to minimize the fires and power surges."

Marduk was silent.

"Tabris seems to be limited to evasion at this juncture." Jyggalag rasped.

Out the Daedalus's window, Darien and Zechs looked out the front window as they approached the wormhole. Waves of red fire chased around a speck of yellow light.

Upon noticing the approaching Daedalus, Tabris spread out his limbs and silently shouted "Iron Man!" The T-X raised an eyebrow in confusion.

Tabris shook his head dismissively. The universal symbol for 'never mind.' Then he puffed out his chest and his crystal shines bright white.

A full-sized Cross beam blasted out of his chest crystal, atomizing his normally AT-field-protected _(expensive)_ white shirt and blowing the T-X dangerously close to the edge of the wormhole.

After the umpteenth strafing run on the Command Carrier, Talyn and Moya's comm channels recieved a high-strength radio signal. "T..is sh.p is ab..t to . ..ou win th.s round. A..ieu!"

Aboard Talyn, Crais smiled cruelly. "Adieu, Scorpius." The Carrier's powercore spools up to ten times maximum power, all ammo stores are ignited and strategic points on the carrier laced with explosives are detonated.

Scorpius was leaving and he did not want the Scarrans or any of these new foes ransacking the corpse of his legacy. At least the Peacekeepers had most of what he'd researched in their libraries already...

A gigantic final explosion preceded the retreat of Moya and Talyn to the meeting point by starburst.

It also flung the detached launch bay door toward the T-X and Tabris at terminal velocity.

Rokusho, standing on top the Daedalus, took this opportunity when he saw it. He shot an orange portal at the launch bay door and a blue portal at the Daedalus's hull.

Tabris noticed the approaching portal and dove through it at an angle. Straight into Rokusho, knocking them both out. Jyggalag immedeately beamed them both inside while the fully powered Daedalus opened fire on the (Tiny, nimble) burning T-X.

Zechs stared beyond the careening launch bay door and the tiny mothflame toward the wormhole. Wait a sec... 'The ship is gone. ...Why is the wormhole still open?'

On an ice floe in the wormhole nexus, Einstein smiled misschievously. "My turn to help _you_." The wormhole god grasped the air and the water around the ice floe rippled, forming waves in the distance.

Zechs chuckled. "Oh, _that's_ why." The wormhole spun into motion. It whipped forward around the T-X and scooped up the partially posessed cyborg.

The T-X did however notice the orange portal on the launch bay door that had also been devoured and bolted through, immedeately collapsing into exhaustion on the Daedalus's hull, adhesing itself to said hull with its liquid metal and cloaking itself to all sensors with the Ring's magics.

Kaworu Nagisa opened his eyes to an unfamilliar cieling. _(There, I said it.)_

He immedeately realizes what had happened. Mostly because his Angel side was awake during all of it and just filled him in.

"Jyggalag!" he screamed.

The hologram appeared before him. At his urging, Tabris ran to the engine room, almost running right into Darien.

The tall Invisible Man raised an eyebrow at his younger. "'Sup?"

"Eheheh... Sorry about... stuff." Darien nodded cheerfully. "I'll kill you later. First we need to take control of the situation. Now, again, what's up?"

"Slightly perturbed by this..." Tabris mumbled. "Nevertheless! We need to go to Sanghelios!" Darien shrugged. "Never heard of it."

Kaworu shook his head in rushed annoyance. "I know I've only been out for half an hour but we need to go there _now._ Everyone's in danger."

Darien nodded in confirmation. "Okay, okay kid. Rokusho and Zechs just installed Ace. Talk to him."

Kaworu followed Darien's gesture toward a hovering eye linked into the reality drive by a very thick, very jury-rigged cable.

The orange eye narrowed as it measured up Tabris. "Hi. You're the Angel from back home." His voice seemed a bit venomous.

Kaworu stuttered in shame. "I'm very sorry I worked wi-"

A cheerful squeal interrupted him. "It's okay. For now. We'll talk about it later. You're in a hurry? Where in space can I help take ya?"

A hologram of a gargantuan web appeared in front of Kaworu.

Kane snarled at the Silverbacks charging his position. His defensor discs can zap them but not much more. He clicked open his mech's shoulder slot.

A beam saber handle extends. The Barks's arm grabs it. The saber extends with a loud hum.

Three Silverbacks in front, two in rear. "Alright then." Kane mutters, as if granting his child a piece of candy. The red mobile suit's chest crystal shoots an energy wave at the Silverbacks. Too fast to dodge, but the berserk animals don't notice anything different.

...Until one of them slams into the Barks and simply bounces off.

Inertia removal cannon.

A simple swipe of the energy blade diagonally bisects the flying Silverback.

Two others suffer the same fate.

Another inertia removal blast. Two more cuts.

"...And back to the burdens of command." Kane mutters in annoyance.

Behind him, inside the Red Council base, the Gauntlet of Rassilon taps a few keystrokes into a console. "That idiot Marduk may have fled, but at least he gave me what I need to turn the tide."

He turned toward a monitor, a scanner measuring the power source... Measuring Doctor Manhattan.

He could swear the good Doctor was staring back at him, even as his blue glow was slowly turning red.

No sound was coming from Doctor Manhattan's lips but a silent scream, but the Gauntlet of Rassilon was a powerful tool. "You will die. You will die soon. Today. The coming hours. You will."

The Gauntlet was slammed into the 'Enter' button. A nice, big red button. He always had a flair for the dramatic.

Enraged, he shouts at the monitor. "No, John Osterman. I will NOT DIE! Never..."

"Today... You will. And so will I. In a way." Doctor Manhattan's serene voice whispered into the gauntlet.

The man with the Gauntlet rolled his eyes. "Alright, you asked for it. Switching off high-spectrum radiation translation." He chuckled at the marvel in his hand. It may have looked like just another medieval gauntlet, but in fact it was the multiverse's finest omnitool.

It could break minds and disintergrate bodies with only a short spin-up time. It could hack anything from gigantic healing/transformation machines to starships to sentient A.I. Oh and it could do magic.

And of course, Time Lords being Time Lords, they added omni-translation.

The Gauntlet clenched into a fist as its owner was getting angrier and angrier.

Outside, the many-ringed energy extractor at the heart of the Red Council base spun into action once again. Only this time, it wasn't going to pull anything from the multiverse. Oh no, this time, he was gonna do something a bit more... pedestrian.

"I don't know if you already know this..."

Doctor Manhattan screamed in agony as much of his being was cooked off.

"But my species, the Time Lords... heh. We once had magic in our universe."

The extraction ceased. Inside the holding cell powered by his own extracted energy, Doctor Manhattan attempted to rematerialize. He was only a specter by now. A translucent shade. But his mind was still fully actualized. And he saw what was about to happen. "Eldred. Run..." he whispered.

"_Now we don't have any magic anymore_."

The shade that was Doctor Manhattan frowned. He shouted as loud as he could, with as much rage as he could. "RUN!"

Dissolution and reduction of mental capacities has a way of reintroducing to the most basic of things. _Panic._

All the spinning rings on the energy extractor suddenly fell into place like a puzzle. One inside the other on the horizontal plane.

They projected a red shockwave outward.

When it washed over Eldred's Dragonfire, it exploded.

When it washed over all the Blue Council's conjured allies, their bodies exploded in showers of gore. The souls within, however, instantly returned to safekeeping in the hands of the wizards who were managing them.

They were lucky Marduk was not there to snap the souls up.

Marduk, of course, had fled from just this event.

When the anti-magic shockwave washed over Abraxus and Surtur, their lightning dissipated.

She tried to conjure more as a Tau crisis suit saw the opportunity to literally jump onto her.

Surtur blocked the blow with his arms. The Crisis suit was knocked on its ass by the Storm Giant. He followed his quickly retreating wife through the wasteland.

Shakti, Buta and Eldred did the same, leaving only the Iron Giant to fight the roughly three thousand Tau suits still standing.

And then a flash of white followed by...

KUNG-TISSH, KUNG-TISSH, SCHWIIIIIIING, SCHWIIING, DAKKADAKKADAKKA.

The Daedalus arrived.

Every Tau soldier has access to a personal shield, making them immune to standard teleporter warfare (I.E. Teleporting someone into the planet's crust or high orbit).

Jyggalag however used the sheer power granted to him by two S2Ms to construct a sensor suite and increased processing power _ex nihilo_ out of the various semi-magical or purely magical techniques he now had access to.

He wasn't teleporting the Tau. Oh no, nothing so pedestrian.

He was teleporting their _bullets_.

Which Darien supplemented with sustained fire on key targets from all weapons at once.

"Note to self: Always leave Darien in control during a ground seige."

"Videogames, Zechs. Try 'em some time. I'll buy you a Gundam one."

Darien's smug chuckle was cut off by Zechs hitting the 'off' button on his helmet communicator.

He was sitting inside his Aries, which had been fitted with the third S2M _(in a VERY haphazard setup)_ The roof on the launch bay he'd once shot out was now fitted with hinges _(courtesy of both Whiterun's smiths and Doctor Aki)_ to make stupid stunts like surfing on a starship more of a routine thing.

Zechs shook his head in annoyance, followed by a chuckle. "Well, I asked for adventure..." On the shoulder of Zechs's Aries, Rokusho stands up as well, wary in anticipation.

-Preview- _(Chapter 5 will end the Red Council arc. ...Mostly.)_

...No ceiling. Just the roof of a cave. Nagisa stood bolt upright when he realized what had happend. "G-MAN! What did you _do_?" he shouted! "Calm yourself, child..." a baritone echoed through the cavern, though it wasn't a spoken voice. Something exploded out of the water...

... "I AM THE MASTER AND YOU WILL OBEY ME!" The Glove of Rassilon crackled with lightning...

... "...No." he stated flatly after a moment's contemplation...

... "Here! You've earned it!" ...

...Kaworu caught the orange object flung at his head...

... "I am Tirion Fordring, head of the Argent Crusade. You came at a _very_ bad time!" Tirion glanced behind him, toward the Wrathgate.

Zechs glanced the same way. A gout of red flame blasted out from the pavillion/warzone in front of the Wrathgate, one-shotting Sindragosa the Frost Wyrm through the bony chest.

"I believe the demon that brought us would disagree." He turned back to Fordring, whose expression vascillated between seething rage and slack-jawed awe.

Darien sighed loudly behind Zechs. "So just how screwed are we?"...

... "VOLTEKKA!" two voices shouted in unison as two pairs of chest- and shoulder-mounted energy weapons opened up. A huge flare of pink energy blasted out from her shoulders, colliding with her brother's slightly more powerful version of the same attack. ...

...Darien stared up at the gigantic tear in reality near Icecrown Citadel from the city of Dalaran, Rokusho and Zechs beside him. Jaina Proudmoore gasped as she saw what they were all staring at. "Light... _what is that thing?_"

Darien smirked and glanced at the young human mage. "That.. is Unit 02 going berserk. Certifiably impossible but there you have it."

Zechs glanced sideways at Darien, pithy sarcasm evident in his voice. "You have your answer... How screwed we are?"

Darien nodded softly, leaning contently against the wall of one of Dalaran's towers, like his two friends. "Yeah. We're all gonna die. But at least it's gonna be a pretty death."

Jaina could not for the life of her say anything. Anything at all. All she could do was watch the red monstrosity stand up and glow white...


End file.
